Is it possible for the slightly extreme left and the slightly extreme right to come together in America?

Irreconcilable difference: the role that government should play in providing for people’s needs. There are a number of others but that is the elephant in the center of the room as I see it.

You’re talking about both ends of the spectrum . . . if it were somehow the folks down the middle, there might be a chance, a slim one, but still a chance, on some issues.

Social democrat

+

Libertarian

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legalize marijuana

Political spectrum is an illusion in American politics. The best you can say is that Republicans represent the far right, and Democrats represent the center compared to political positions held by the rest of the world. Even if they did “reconcile,” America would still be conservative. And probably theocratic, at that.

Republican

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Potsmoker

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Libertarian

I think you’ve sown the seeds of failure in your own question:
elect someone we could all believe in

That seems unlikely impossible on its face.

Could independents, libertarians and ‘social democrats’ even agree on a candidate or a viable platform? Unlikely in the extreme. Your ‘social democrats’ and libertarians have nearly diametrically opposed views of the proper role and function of government. Who is going to appeal to both sides of that question, except on marginal issues (such as [some] drug legalization)?

I don’t see this as a real possibility.

However, it might be possible for social democrats to align with democrats, or for libertarians to align with a very unusual democrat or republican, and for either of those coalitions to appeal to more independents, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

Unlikely, I think.

Sure, as soon as one or the other develops superior debate skills.

I think if I understand what you’re talking about, you’re talking about the people who are sincere in their beliefs and strong in their convictions. Group A) the libertarians want what they believe is best for the country, they want government off our backs and to allow us to live our own lives, take responsibility for ourselves and not to have taxes unnecessarily high as to make our government little more than a “nanny state”. Group B) the social democrats want what they believe is best for the country, they too want government off our backs, to be less intrusive into our personal lives, and they too believe in taking responsibility for ourselves and not being taxed more than necessary, but unlike the libertarians, they believe a strong central government has a big role to play in providing people with services and safety nets that they can not provide for themselves.

At the core, I believe both groups really want the same thing….no one wants to pay more in taxes than they should have to, and no one wants government to interfere in our lives any more than absolutely necessary. It’s simply a matter of how you look at it though…libertarians believe that the path to this ideal is to shrink government to as small a size as possible. Social democrats believe the path to this ideal is to grow the government to the size necessary to take care of its people. Is this really an irreconcilable difference?

Well the way I see it yes and no. Under our current political environment, the answer is yes, and that is simply because of all of the misinformation out there. Can I as someone who would side with the social democrats really be “mad” that someone doesn’t want say a trillion dollar tax increase to pay for something? Not really. But what I CAN be mad about is when there really is no trillion dollar tax increase first of all because most of the money comes from cuts and other efficiencies created, while the increased tax burden falls on people who have enough money to absorb the burden with no great impact on their lives in any way, and whose taxes remain as a percentage of their income far lower than those of people making far less money than they do.

I really think what it would take to get the two sides to come together is the truth, laid bare. I think if we could come up with a system to create honesty in politics, most of our differences would seem far less severe. And I’m not saying that the libertarian side is the only side that would have to move in its perception of how things are….I think libertarians would need to really be shown the clear and present need for a social security net, they would need to be made fully aware of the human suffering that occurs and they would need to be given a sort of “walk a mile in their shoes” perspective on the human condition. They would need to see what social democrats see, namely that it’s not a matter of person a working hard for what person b gets for free, but a matter of both person a and person b work hard, and something out of person b’s control happens to person b, and now person b needs a little help just to get by, and how easily the tables could turn and something bad could happen to person a. There’s nothing like a personal tragedy to turn a libertarian into a social democrat, but we wouldn’t need to cripple the children of all the libertarians, we’d just need to foster an environment where people listen to each other, lay bare the facts and statistics, the real world case files, and really make it relatable on a human level.

On the other side of the coin, you’d have to become a bit more pragmatic with some who are on the side of social democracy. There is a prevailing “money fixes everything” attitude which can be fostered among this group when the money is not abundant enough to fix everything. It can tend to get a little pie in the sky at times, and I think really there is only so much government can or should do. I believe the government’s role should be to serve the public interest, to provide things that you can’t as an individual provide yourself…you can’t provide yourself roads or schools or postal delivery or health care or national defense or police protection and so on. And even if you DO take personal responsibility for say your end of life planning, retirement and such, and invest a portion of your income, when the stock market is based on the fact that some will win and some will lose, you can’t even guarantee yourself that you’ll be able to take care of yourself when you get old, much less if you’re sick or injured, such is the reason for Social Security. You can’t always save enough for your living expenses if you lose your job, and in our society, you don’t have to suck as an employee to get laid off. There are things our government needs to provide simply to keep people from falling through the cracks because of circumstances outside their control.

BUT, just throwing money at all these programs is not a panacea. The libertarians have a very valid point about wasting money. This money should be spent well, no more than what is necessary to accomplish our goals (serving the good of our citizens) should have to be taken in the form of taxation. Taxation should be made more fair and equitable so that overall no one really has to feel that taxes are a burden that gets in the way of living, but they need to be at a level suitable to do the things government MUST do to meet it’s lofty goal set forth in the preamble to the Constitution of providing for the public welfare.

I think if we could create an electoral system where we had more than 2 vialble choices each cycle in all Federal races, where all campaigning was done with public funds, all candidates were given equal access to funding and the public airwaves, and where campaign rhetoric was regulated, fact checked and forced to remain on the topic of what the candidate believes/would do, rather than why their opponents are the bad guy and voting for him would be akin to a nuclear explosion, then I think we could get some of those facts on the table. We would not have a system where everyone can be manipulated emotionally so that they will believe anything from massive exaggerations to outright lies about policy.

And if we were to reign in Congress by requiring actual fillibusters, I think we could avoid a lot of obstructionism. A lot of legislation is done because it will “look good” to the constitutents, and a lot of legilslation is blocked because THAT’s what looks good to THEIR constitutents, and it doesn’t become about doing the right thing, but about getting re-elected. We need to reign in lobbyists, and make sure that Congress and the Presidency are not cushy jobs where you get all sorts of perks for wheeling and dealing. We need to remind the people that make our laws that they are public servants who work for US, not lucky stiffs who just have to fool their voters into voting for them again and again so they can remain on the gravy train.

If we could do that, then yes, we could have a government run by people who disagreed on how to get to the end game, but who realized that their goals were in common, that they all wanted the same things, just believed in different paths. And some of thsoe paths could with time be demonstrated to be dead ends and closed off (I’m looking at the neocons and the unregulated free market supporters). Fact is, at one time, I thought I was a libertarian, because I answered questions to determine where I was on the political spectrum, and because I’m into a) personal responsibility, b) not wasting taxpayer money and c) keeping government out of our private lives, that seemed to be where I fell. It made me realize that my differences were in nuance, they were in understanding the difference between taking personal responsibility and assigning personal responsibility for things that happen beyond one’s control. They were in understanding the differences between not wasting taxpayer money and not collecting taxes at all. They were in understanding the differences between keeping governement out of our personal lives and eliminiating governement altogether.

Bottom line, for both sides to moderate enough to find common ground, both sides would need to see the whole truth laid bare. That is impossible now because there are too many vested interests in keeping people ill informed. But most of these “wedge” issues are by and large artificially constructed and financed by people who have a vested interest in making us fight about them. Until those people are denied the ability to manipulate public opinion, we will be at odds.

@dalepetrie Really, really GA!

@Dr_Dredd – why, thank you!

I saw Dan Rather being interviewed by Rachael Maddow the other night and he said that he hadn’t seen this country as polarized and angry as it is now since the Vietnam War, and I am inclined to agree. I think that the Right has become so extreme, and so opposed to even the idea of government, that the only thing it can do should it ever seize power (say, through unlimited corporate spending on elections) is to demonstrate just how government in general, and democracy in particular, can be.

Indeed, when you venture outside the civility of Fluther into unmoderated political forums and ask people what they think they owe their fellow man, a large percentage of them say, “Nothing.” Not kindness, not civility, and especially not any kind of material aid.

One would think that people nowadays spring fully-grown from the brain of the Internet, entirely self-made—unaided and untutored by any other human being, and utterly bereft of the milk of human kindness. The lack of empathy and even common decency one encounters from ordinary folks on the Right can be quite chilling and disturbing.

Here, for example, Tea Partiers mock and scorn a man who has Parkinson’s Disease. Here Town hall shouters heckle woman in wheel chair pleading for her life-saving medication. Here Tea Partiers heckle a woman whose daughter-in-law died because she didn’t have health insurance. Here Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin mock 11-year old Marcelas Owens after he spoke about losing his mother due to lack of health insurance. Here is another attack on 12-year old boy who was injured in a car crash. And here a totally distraught woman pleading for care for her recently brain injured husband is met with a stunning lack of concern.

There is a kind of tone-deafness on the Right to people’s pain—and a kind of virulent shoot-the-messenger hatred toward anyone who would seek to remind them of what rationality, natural rights, human dignity and the Golden Rule would entail when applied to human governance.

It is no longer possible to have a political debate with the rights where facts, logic and truth matter. The “debates” we were having in about health care should make it absolutely clear that the Right was never interested in getting to the truth of the matter, finding common ground, or simply hashing out an honest difference of opinion. Rather, what we have been hostage to this whole time one side having a collective nervous breakdown. Facts have been replaced by slogans and sound bytes. Arguments have been replaced with ideological catch phrases and talking points. Good faith has given way to spin, and spin to outright lying.

We no longer seem to debate actual policy debates, we bicker over who is a socialist, an “elite,” or whether our worst fears are coming to pass. These feed into paranoid narratives, demonized opponents and end-of-days scenarios. The purpose public political forum are no longer to have a civil political discourse, but to shut down political discourse—and in so doing, so disgust people with their fellow citizen that they give up on democracy.

The point is to inspire mutual contempt. In one discussion I was observing, someone made a comment to the effect that he didn’t think everyone deserved health care. To which someone replied, “You must have contempt for humanity.” To which he responded, “No, just you!”

It hit me like a punch in the gut. The comment wasn’t directed at me, but seeing someone else gratuitously abused like that upset me almost as much as if it had been me. My first impulse was to figuratively reach through the screen and smack the living snot out of that person, but I realized that would have only escalated the situation and debased everyone who was touched by the ripples of incivility that would have followed.

Ever since Fox News got into the propaganda business, the nation’s political discourse has descended rapidly into the fevered swamps of paranoia and spiritual rot. Not surprisingly, the concept of human solidarity is almost alien to the American political discourse. We no longer see one another as proud members of the same great community, pulling together because we are all part of the same enterprise.

Instead, the Right refuses to accept the outcome of the last election and get on with the task of governing the country. It spends its time demonizing the country’s leaders, and treating their attempts to govern as if they were forms of treason. We have seen a mistrust of government grow into a full-blown hatred of government, as if the United States was uniquely incompetent at government among all the countries in the world.

Somehow we have allowed the Right to talk us into believing that we are under no obligation to help people we don’t like. Indeed, the Right feels particularly resentful at the government forcing them to contribute people and causes which they regard as “charity.”

As with the heckled man with Parkinson’ cited above, they are furious that the government wants more from them than they feel willing to give (although if their private generosity were sufficient, the man wouldn’t be protesting). And, it infuriates them no end to feel forced to give charity to people they feel are “undeserving” or whom they don’t regard as “real Americans.”

However solidarity is not an act of charity but an act of unity between citizens, equals and allies. Personally, I might not have any particular interest in the city’s multi-million dollar sports arena, and you might not have any particular interest in the offerings of the local PBS station, but I go along with your brand of entertainment and you go along with mine, and we both come out ahead. For a nominal personal contribution, we gain a sense of community spirit and pride, not to mention a stadium that can be used for generations. Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating to those who receive it, and reinforces unequal power relations.

The framing of questions in order to incite bickering, recrimination and contempt is a time-honored technique of divide and rule. Any attempt to enforce even a nominal level of civility is reviled as “political correctness.” Any attempt to address the many historical grievances that make us hate one another so, is dismissed as “whining” as if there never were any injustices, only selfish people trying to get something for nothing by complaining over things in the past that have been blown out of proportion.

When I first read about a group on the Far Right proposing to “re-translate” the Bible in order to airbrush out the “liberal” empathy, compassion and the social justice parts, I thought it was a joke. Likewise, during Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing, when the Republican Senators opined that “empathy” was a liberal code word and were upset that empathy might be an undesirable quality in a judge, I began to realize that they weren’t kidding. And, now that Glenn Beck is urging his followers to leave their churches if they advocate social justice, “shared community,” “collective responsibility,” “respect for diversity,” or a “truly democratic society,” it has become undeniable that something spiritually unwholesome and deeply unChristian is metastasizing on the Right.

So, when they come at you with their bad faith arguments, their made up facts, their sly digs, their contemptuous needling insults and snarky zingers, they are essentially shutting any substantive discussion down, and attempting to get you to respond in kind. Once they get you to lose your temper and lure you over to their rhetorical dark side, it tends to confirm what they believe all along; namely, that people are selfish, unfeeling and mean, and therefore deserving of nothing.

If they are not decisively defeated at the polls in November I fear that nothing short of civil war will bring them back to good faith bargaining.

I am in awe of your responses, both of you, @dalepetrie and @Zuma.

@dalepetrie, you are telling us what should be obvious but has been lost in all the noise, namely, that truth is the right answer, just as it has always been—and giving us some good-old-fashioned American faith in the notion that if we could all see the same truth, we’d remember that we’re on the same side.

And @Zuma, you are explaining, with what I hear as an undertone of sorrow, why the noise doesn’t stop and just how far away we are from hearing any recognizable common truth.

You also voice a fear I have been harboring for some time now: how can it not come to blows? And how unimaginably horrible it would be if it did.

One nation, divisible after all.

@Zuma – lurve what you wrote. But FWIW, as you saw I started my quip by talking about people who are sincere in their beliefs and strong in their convictions. I tend to demonize the power structure that manipulates the people on the right, far more than the people on the right themselves. I think too many of these people are easily led into believing fear mongering, hate mongering, and divisiveness to ever seek to rise above it…that would be too scary. As long as we can divide people into us vs. them, we will continue to see the appalling behavior you enumerated.

If you were to ask a random sample of Americans large enough to be considered a representative sample of all eligible voters a series of ideological questions…questions that were based in what people feel to be right vs. wrong, basically moral questions, I think you’d see a far different picture than what America looks like today. I think a great number of people who currently behave in very conservative ways and side with very radical right wing power structures would be shocked to realize how ideologically similar they are to the liberals for whom they show such great disdain. Bottom line, I think most people, not all, but a significant majority are actually good hearted, they mean well and they really aren’t as hateful or uncaring as they can sometimes come off as being.

The main problem is as I see it is that if you are, and I’m having a hard time deciding how to put this without sounding elitist or judgemental, but let’s say I see the evolution of human culture as spectrum. On one end you have the caveman mentality which is survival, conquest, gratification, complete self reliance…that is where mankind has been since he first lost his fins (as it were). On the other end is the future of humanity, the noblest endeavors of culture and civility, the end of the spectrum where everyone prospers and we all leave in peace and harmony. I think the problem is that as a species, we have evolved far enough to see what humanity should be striving for, but not quite far enough to get there.

And I think when you look at it, the people who still operate closer to the past way of doing things in human culture are closer to their instincts. They may be the ones who are most agressive, most competitive, have the greatest acumen for business, sports, basically they have the keys to success in a dog eat dog world…it’s a very practical way of being. This is why you find this mindset so much among the right wing captains of industry…if you grab a CEO off the street, someone who has clawed his way to great wealth and power, you are very likely to hit a Conservative. On the other side of the spectrum, are perhaps what you could refer to as the meek who shall inherit the Earth (but not yet). They are the thinkers, they are the worriers, they are the people who strive to evolve beyond the norm. These are the people who want to look out for their fellow man, who feel pain at the prospect of solving disputes with violence…they are your people who joined clubs in high school instead of teams. Grab a Librarian on the street, someone who has focused their life on learning, expanding ones horizons and becoming a well rounded individual, you are more likely than not to find a Liberal. Now these are not hard and fast rules, and it’s not to say that even the Conservatives can’t be compassionate and the Liberals can not be aggressive, but as a general mindset, this is what we have….half of humanity wants to go forward, the other half wants to stay put. Liberals like change, Conservatives like stability. Liberals want to remove themselves from the lesser qualities of mankind, Conservatives want to master them.

So, people who are by their very nature, far closer to an evolutionary point where instinct, force, and competitive spirit trump all, are simply more “primal” in the way they perceive the world. They are closer to their “fight or flight” origins, to their “may the best man win” mentality. They see the world as winners and losers, and they don’t believe in ties…they want to be the winners. And when you’re closer to your “caveman” instincts, the single most adaptive trait you can have is your ability to sense fear. As such, the Conservative is motivated by fear. The Liberal however wants to think about things, wants to put it all in perspective and to consider the consequences of each action. Liberals would not have survived 10,000 years ago. The Liberal can be made every bit as afraid as a Conservative, but in the end, it’s not the survival instinct which makes them decide how to react, but reasoning and logic.

So, it stands to reason that if presented with a fearmongering tactic, Conservatives would polarize as a survival technique…it becomes a me vs. the thing to fear. This makes them impervious to logic, because words can be used as tools to confuse, to make someone let down his guard. You trust no one and you go with your gut, it will keep you alive. A Liberal will hear it and may be in fear at first, but will eventually come down off the adrenaline shock and say, wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. Prove it, show me why I should be frightened.

It is no accident then that for the past 40+ years, we’ve seen almost all political advertising become not about what I will do for you, but about why you should fear the other guy. It’s no accident that we see far more of these types of ads placed by the right than by the left…the left would prefer to debate facts…but facts are boring, they don’t grab you the way fear does. And so it’s no accident that we’re seeing more Conservatives in power than Liberals over this same time frame. And it’s also no accident that when the Conservatives are in power, the Liberals try to think their way around the situation, but when Liberals are in power, Conservatives bitch and moan to high heaven and seem to come unglued in their pursuit of regaining power. It’s no great secret that the official stance of the Republican party has long been to supress turnout in elections.

Conservatives know that the fewer people who vote, the better their chances of winning. This is because you can always motivate scared people to get out and vote, but you have to give the rest of us a reason. Liberals just are no good at lying, being aggressive and agitating their base to vote under false pretense…it doesn’t seem “right”. Conservatives, whose goal is not to find the path to a higher evolutionary plane, but simply to win win win have no qualms…all’s fair in love and war, and elections are war.

The good news is, the current generation has been raised by people who don’t send their kids out on the football team to win at any cost, but who instead send them out to soccer and Little League to have fun. A lot of people hate that our kids aren’t taught competition like they used to be, that everyone gets a ribbon just for participating, but this is basicaly how our society is evolving. We are, and have been for a good 20–30 years, raising a future generation who values team spirit, commaradery and participation, one which doesn’t take a loss as a crushing blow to its collective spirit, but as an opportunity to strive for something better, and perhaps a realistic look at one’s own limitations.

I think we saw in the 2008 election what is possible, we had a charismatic young man who touched a nerve among those who have been raised to think rather than react. It was this group that was key to creating such a dramatic changing of the guard. So, what we’re left with is a fairly bleak short term…fear has reasserted itself among the lesser evolved, and the people who act rather than think have been sold on the idea that progress is the enemy. And there simply is nothing at this point to motivate the thinkers in the way they were inspired 2 years ago. But increasingly, our older who were raised in a society that valued competition will die, while our younger who were raised in a society that valued participation will come of voting age.

I think we happen to be living in an age where unlike 2 generations ago, it’s no longer an uphill battle…now we’ve reached the top of the hill and we’re playing ideological tug of war. One side wants to pull us back to the side of the hill where we started, because they’re afraid of what might be on that other side. The other side has seen what lies on the other side of the hill and likes it and is trying to drag side a, kicking and screaming over the edge. The biggest obstacle is that the people on the side of the hill where everything started are stronger, more entrenched, more determined, less fatiguable and have more invested in winning. What the people on the brave new world side of the hill have on their side is momentum and growing numbers.

In short, it’s a matter of time, no one can say exactly how much, before there are simply far more people motivated by logic than by fear…its a by-product of our cultural evolution. Once that happens, fear tactics will become more and more relagated to the trash heap of history. People in power will on average become more intelligent, more altruistic, and more willing to look for ways to do things better. And I believe that will lead to a bettter electoral system, which will in turn lead to better governance. but for now, those of us on the right side of history must persevere, not allow ourselves to be tired out by it, and at times be willing to push ourselves outside our comfort zone in order to play the game on their terms, because the game is rigged, and we can’t win by playing by our own rules. As long as the left seems willing to lay down and compromise with fear in order to keep the peace, fear will remain a powerful force.

So, if it does come to blows, it won’t necessarily be a bad thing. Those on the side of right may not have the brute force and the drive to succeed at any cost, but they have the numbers, the historical momentum, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to manupulate their oppressors. The right wing power structure has basically shown us the way to motivate these people to join their side. What besides the will to win at any costs is the left missing in order to co-opt this tactic and use it to score a final victory?

My predicition…the pendulum is swinging, and it will keep swinging left to right and back again, and the pendulum is sitting on a table that leans to the right. But little by little, we’re sanding away at the left legs of that table. Will it take 20 years…50…100, who knows? But man’s inhumanity, nay indifference to man will be relegated to the trash heap of history sooner or later. Whether those of us discussing this now will live to see it, all bets are off, but it doesn’t mean we should stop trying to make it so.

@Zuma, @dalepetrie I’ll get back to you when I have more time to read the responses you obviously put a lot of thought into. Thanks.

@dalepetrie Your first answer is right along the lines of what I’m thinking, but worded completely differently than I would have said it. Good for my brain to have that input. More from me later.

@Zuma Well said, I agree with you on the tone of discourse, and on much of what you said. I am imagining a solution, one that seeks out those on the right who are not the extreme tea baggers, nor the Republicans that egg them on, but who realize that their are flaws in our system and in our discourse, and brings them to the party with like minded people with more leftist leanings. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but I’m at least enjoying the thought experiment. I’m still sorting out some ideas for a longer reply.

@Zuma You’re not here much, but when you post, you hit it out of the park! Beautifully said.

@dalepetrie Wow, well said again. Thanks for these thoughtful answers, folks. I don’t imagine this will all really come to blows (outside of a few minor skirmishes between the occasional protesters), but perhaps I’m an eternal optimist. Also, I have to say that kids sports seem to have gone backwards, from my generation when we were taught about sportsmanship and everyone got a ribbon to participating to the current state where the competition is fiercer than ever and parents are getting in fights over games. If you saw the way youth sports were treated where I live, you might be less optimistic. I think I’ll get my kids into swimming, you never hear about fights among parents at swim meets.

@Snarp – I guess that is a bit disheartening. Though I’m thinking from what I’m seeing, it’s probably a localized thing. I think certainly there’s a backlash where some parents are really looking for that competition for their kids, and I think that will always exist, but at least now alongside those highly competitive sports where parents lose their minds and expect their kids to be killing machines, you still have a lot of activities where participation is valued above all. My kid is 8½ and so far I have yet to enroll him in anything where winning seemed to matter to anyone. Maybe when he gets closer to high school it will change. But I figure it’s just like the military…there will always be a subset of any generation which is just built for taking orders, striving to win, etc., it’s just that you see recruitment #‘s way down, I don’t think that’s all because of the wars, part of it is that we’ve raised a generation or two now who refuse to follow blindly and question everything…that’s not a military characteristic or a Conservative characteristic. But that said, there are still plenty of young folks who do try to break the football rushing record, or who join the military, or who leave college and go right to Wall Street….it will always be there, I’m just saying that our culture 50 years ago there were far more people on the one side, today it’s split right down the middle, and in maybe 50 more years, there will be more people on the side of questioning rather than following.

I really wanted to include some extended thoughts of my own on this question, but maybe because @dalepetrie has done so well speaking for me here and all over Fluther lately, and maybe because I’ve seen too much commentary by people to enamored of Ayn Rand on Fluther lately, I’m not sure I have it in me. But I’ll give it a shot.

I’ve heard a lot of criticism of Obama lately for things like the bank bailout and generally expanding the size of government and the deficit. When reminded that Bush pushed through the bank bailout, expanded the size and power of government, created a massive deficit when handed a balanced budget, and set the stage for further deficit increases under Obama, they say, “well, I didn’t like Bush either.” Now these people are either lying because they don’t want to have to deal with the intellectual inconsistency of supporting Bush but criticizing Obama for the things Bush did, or they really believe that Obama and the Democrats are worse for personal freedom than Bush and the Republicans were. In either case, I don’t recall seeing any of these libertarian types at the anti-Patriot Act protest I went to, it was packed with communists and liberals fighting to keep the government out of our private lives.

But therein lies the rub, the Republicans have succeeded in convincing these people that they are the party of personal freedom, when nothing could be farther from the truth. They are the party of corporate freedom, as far as personal freedom goes, they’re aggin’ it. They don’t want teh gays to have the same rights everybody else does, they don’t care who they wiretap, they want to limit protest and speech, they want to be able to snoop on what books you check out of the library without a warrant, and the list goes on.

I would like to be able to convince these people that the Democrats are actually better for personal freedom, especially when you are talking about freedoms that really matter, like the right to read what you want and not worry about being tracked for it and to talk on the phone without being listened to. Because really, books and communication are far more dangerous to tyranny than a few handguns. You can’t stop a tyrannical government with our military might with concealed handguns. When they come to take your gun they won’t pry it from your cold, dead fingers; they’ll just incinerate your house, you, your family, and your guns with a drone missile strike. Crap, I didn’t mean to get off track onto guns.

Anyway, they probably won’t be swayed to a Democrat, but I’m pretty convinced that there are an awful lot of us who really want sensible government that is truly committed to individual freedom on both sides of the aisle. I think if we could just find a way to compromise and say, hey, I’ll pay a little more in taxes so everyone can have healthcare, housing, and food if you’ll agree to let me keep my guns, not toss out the Bill of Rights, legalize marijuana, and do pretty much whatever else doesn’t harm someone else. I think that such a coalition could win votes from the left, from the libertarian right, and from centrists and pretty much obliterate the Republicans and the Democrats leaving corporations without representation, but restoring representation for real people.

I suppose there are really two impediments to this, one structural and one ideological. The first is our election system which insures the two major parties will always win, and which those with the power to change have every incentive to maintain. If we had some sort of proportional representation in congress and instant runoff voting for President then maybe some people with different ideas could get elected and they’d be forced to form a coalition to govern and to actually compromise with people with different ideas. Then again, it’s been only marginally successful in Europe and can end up in a governmental paralysis.

The second impediment is idealogical, and I blame it all on Ayn Rand with a little help from Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. They’ve managed to convince people that individual freedom means not helping anyone who needs help, because it’s their own damn fault they need it. The disconnect that they have managed to created between the middle class and the poor and working class in this country is staggering. They’ve created a group of people completely unable to see and understand the lives of people they see every day and sometimes work side by side with. And they’ve convinced people that blaming the poor for their failure is somehow a libertarian value. So we certainly can’t win any Libertarians until we can cleave them from Ayn Rand and convince them that personal freedom does not preclude solidarity or helping others. If we could do that, I think we could at least convince them that Republicans are not the lesser of two evils, they are the worst of all evils.

For starters, maybe we should just throw our support to Ron Paul. Think about it, we all get behind Ron Paul as much as we have Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich. That’s right, we go to them instead of asking them to come to us. Now Ron Paul becomes a force to be reckoned with, more of a threat to the two parties than Ralph Nader was, maybe as much or more than Ross Perot, someone who the major candidates ignore at their peril. And if he wins he still has to deal with congress to reign him in, and then the coalition building begins. Plus, the stronger Ron Paul appears, the more support he will pull from the Republicans.

So I guess I did have it in me.

@Snarp – I lurved your comment. Only problem is, Ron Paul is a BIG believer that the States should decide everything and we should all but disband the Federal Government. I think that’s what the tea partiers want as well. It is antithetical to what you and I are sticking up for.

@dalepetrie I know, it’s a gutsy strategy, but the President can’t do anything like that without congress. I suppose if he got elected it could lead to some strange and interesting political showdowns. But my real secret motive is simply to split the Republican vote so neither they nor Ron Paul can beat the Democrat. I guess that doesn’t help us get away from the two parties being what they are, and there’s always the chance that it will make the Democrats shift farther right, but hey, it’s a thought experiment anyway, I can’t imagine we’d get anywhere near it.

Interesting idea. I suspect it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Just like 2008 was a battle for the soul of the Democratic party to determine if we were going to establishment or ideology, 2012 will be a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. You’ll have Romney, Palin, possibly Huckabee but maybe not, Paul and a few others vying for the nomination. Depending on what force is strongest at exerting itself, you’ll either see that the inherent structure of the Republican Party is simply too rigid to nominate a non establishment candidate, in which case someone like Romney will get it, or you will see that personality politics and devisiveness are the key to inciting enough hatred to get someone like Palin nominated, or you will find that the Libertarian streak which wants to just tear down the whole damn country will be the unstoppable force that launches someone like Paul to the nomination. If you get Palin or Paul, it will be two parties, if you get an establishment candidate, I think you’ll see something akin to Perot ‘92 as someone is going to run on the newly formed “Tea Party” ticket. My bet is that Palin is close enough to Tea Party Libertarian extremism, and has the power of personality politics, and a strong grasp of how to use hatred to motivate one’s base, she will get the nomination, and Obama will just make her look like a raving moron during the debates. She’ll cry foul, claim it was sexism and ramp up the hysteria even more. Obama will win, but it will be shockingly close, and we’ll be more divided than ever. In 2016 is when I see the first real danger of wingnuttery siezing power and destroying us.

I’ve hurt my arm again, so it’s very painful for me to write. I think the problem is that the right no longer has any moderates in it—by which I mean people who are interested in governing through the Democratic process.

For the past year or two the Right has not been involved in policy debates. Instead they have been involved in a scorched earth policy of sabotaging the the democratic process by telling barefaced lies that demonize “liberals,” “progressives” and Obama in an attempt to create their own paranoid narrative where these are being seen as the internal enemies. The growing violence of the rhetoric, the posters depicting guns, the spitting on black congressmen, Republican legislators egging their followers on, racial and homophobic epithets—now unbelievably vile death threats, a propane gas line being tampered with, a mysterious white powder turning up in Rep. Weiner’s mail, and the GOP leadership not speaking out about it forcefully—show an unmistakable pattern of escalation that’s exactly what you see in the early stages of fascism.

It really is honest to goodness fascism folks. The Tea Party Libertarians are just chumps along for the Fox News organized, corporate-funded ride. Palin is an airhead (all the better for the NeoCons to control, like Bush was).

David Frum, one of Dubya’s hired brains, got himself fired today from his right wing think tank sinecure for saying that the Republicans have been acting under the mistaken impression that Fox News worked for them, when in fact, the Republican Party works for Roger Ailes and Fox News. You can see for yourself how any Republican who runs afoul of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh has 24 hours to recant, or they get savaged by this incrasingly radicalized base.

As a consequence, the GOP has now given itself over to the Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Roger Ailes agenda on the Right. The GOP has painted itself into a corner, where it is no longer any room for with “Liberals,” or “Progressives” whom Fox has painted as “traitors,” “enemies,” pure evil. There is no room for compromise, governing, or government in this scheme of things; so they have no choice but to double down the paranoia, the “stabbed in the back” rhetoric, and the mean-spirited attack on empathy and compassion.

I don’t have the strength to type this all out, so I urge you to read the following:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment

@Zuma Thanks for trying, please don’t aggravate your injury for us, I’m glad of your input, but your health comes first.

What I wonder is where the moderates from the right go, and can we make a place for them?

David Frum’s been talking a lot more sense lately than when he worked for Bush.

“Slightly extreme?” That’s a bit of an oxymoron, don’t you think? Why not just say “left leaning centrists” and “right leaning centrists?” Can they come together? For the most part, they are already there.