The Right Thing To Do

It's become almost reflexive for political observers to assume that all policy positions are motivated by a desire for political gain. Whether it is the average American, who scoffs at the notion of a politician who actually gives a damn about their welfare, or the media pundit, who is oh-so proud of their clever way of using words to pin down a wiggling politico, we have all become ingrained with the belief that politics is about nothing more than political gain.

Democrats only feed into this notion when they are seen to discussing whether it is politically wise for them to decry the violation of bedrock American principles.

Digby has it exactly right, that the question of whether this is a winning issue for the Democrats is and should be completely besides the point.

Did the men who signed the Declaration of Independence do so because they thought it would earn them an honored place in history? No. Most of them assumed they were signing their own death warrant. They did it because it was the right thing to do.

Did Martin Luther King face jailings, beatings and death for what he believed because he thought it would lead to this nation declaring a national holidy to celebrate his birth? No. He expected to die. He talked about it often. But he continued on because it was the right thing to do.

Should Democrats oppose Bush's imperial presumptions because doing so might earn them a vaunted place in history (or at least a few extra votes at the polls)? Should they avoid it because it might hurt them at the polls? No. They should do it because it is the right thing to do.

It is the right thing to do because it is the right thing to do!

Working Together

Wil Weaton (of Wesley Crusher fame) has a long and thoughtful post on dKos that is a followup to an article he wrote for Salon just prior to Christmas. In the article, Wil talks about a blowup his father had with him about the death penalty. Wil wrote the article as a way of dealing with his feelings over the incident and his anger with the way that the polarizing nature of our current political debate has destroyed his ability to talk with his parents about the most pressing issues of the day.

Unfortunately, in the course of writing his original article, Wil painted a picture of his parents that made them out to be wingnuts just like the people he was decrying. The post on dKos describes his subsequent conversations with his parents about the article and how it hurt them. It is a useful (albeit LONG) excursion into an experience that, unfortunately, far to many Americans are experiencing today.

Wil's parents sound like people who are willing to "talk it out" and reach some kind of consensus (even if that means agreeing to disagree). Those are the kind of people who you can work with, even if you have vastly different philosophical outlooks.

It is the True Believers, the One True Wayers and the Wingnuts who are really poisoning our political dialog, and that is what I think Wil was trying to get at in his original article. The mistake he made was in recklessly painting a picture that suggested his parents were of the same stripe when all he was trying to say was that the REAL wingnuts were making it harder for him to have reasonable discussions with his parents (and others) about the most important issues of the day.

There's a lesson here. The true wingnuts are a rare breed. But they are so loud and disruptive, and so many of the rest of us are so desirous of "just getting along", that the wingnuts come to dominate the political discussion. As a result, everyone gets painted into the most extreme corners where they don't fairly belong.

It is those people, the cockroaches as I like to call them, that we should really stomp on. It is the people like Wil's parents that we should continue to try to work with, even if we can never convince them of the correctness of our own beliefes.

We shouldn't let the scuttling of the cockroaches get in the way of our natural human desire to work together to make the world a better place. The spirit of cooperation is as strong a force in human history as is the spirit of competition (possibly more so). It is one of our greatest strengths and one of our most powerful survival instincts.

We fall when we fail to realize how much we are capable of achieving together.

An Analogy

Supporting Bush in his war on Iraq in order to prove you are not afraid of war

is like

Boarding the Titanic in order to prove you are not afraid of boats.

The Democratic America

I agree completely with this post by Digby:

A party that is described as fumbling, confused and scared is unlikely to win elections even if they endorse the wholesale round-up of hippies and the nuking of Mecca. People will listen to us if we can first convince them that we know who we are and what we believe in.

I'm of the mind to adopt "give me liberty or give me death" as my personal motto. If I have to kowtow to a bunch of childish Republican panic artists who have deluded themselves into believing that fighting radical Islam requires turning America into a police state, then it's just not worth it.

In the America that Republicans see, Americans are a bunch of weak-kneed pussies who cower under their bed waiting for Daddy Bush to come and protect them.

In the Democratic America, Americans are brave enough to suffer the harsh realities life throws at us because we know that jettisoning are deepest principles for a false sense of security is the cowards way.

You want to know the secret of Bush's success? Whenever someone suggests that his actions may be politically unsupportable he says, "fuck it" and does it anyway. And the American people, even his critics, know this about him and admire him for it.

There are Democrats who behave similarly (Dean, Feingold, Boxer, Reid, Conyers, etc.). The only reason they have not become the face of the Democratic party, the counter to Bush's "strength of character" is that the rest of the party continues to treat our hard asses like crazy uncle Joe that no one likes to talk about.

After all, if we were to stand behind these people we might get the reputation for being "soft" on military issues and that might hurt us at the polls. Better the keep them locked away and change the subject whenever they come up.

After all, we wouldn't want Democrats to get the reputation that they actually STAND for something would we?