Reply #13: A classical short-term perspective

[IrateCitizen]

D_S_B, I often enjoy your perspective on these boards, although I sometimes don't agree with you. However, this is one instance in which I have to say I don't agree with you, and I don't particularly find much in your perspective to appreciate.

Policy change, if it is to STICK, is a long and tortuous process. The signing-off on such change is usually only the LAST step. And while it quite often requires politicians who are willing to display a decent amount of political courage, the final enacting of policy is, quite often, the epilogue in a long struggle.

You said, "You can elect people who think like you or you can scare those currently in power to think like you or you won't vote for them next time...."

Actually, there is a third way here, which may be a bit of an extension on point #2 -- you can scare politicians to the point that they begin to expect outright riots in the streets if they don't change. This is what largely happened in the Civil Rights movement, for instance. I'm not discounting LBJ's political courage in pushing the 1964 Civil Rights Act through, because it was integral. However, by 1964 it had become apparent that the issue of civil rights was literally tearing the nation apart, and would do so unless it were addressed. In this way, the law itself was more of an epilogue to the entire struggle, than the central piece. The movement itself had radically transformed the national conscience.

The end to slavery was another example in this vein.

I'm not saying it's not important to get sympathetic politicians elected to office. Absolutely it is. And, contrary to popular opinion here, those politicians are NOT invariably Democrats -- I'd argue that the emphasis on party has weakened our capacity to really affect change. But the MOST important thing, IMHO, is to continue doing the work necessary to change public opinion on a particular subject. That's very much like what the IVAW group is doing. Sadly, it's a situation in which the more casualties we take in Iraq, the more the situation degenerates, the more the antiwar veterans' voices will come to the fore. But the overall goal is not to simply change parties -- if Kerry were in office right now, we'd be largely stuck in the same conundrum vis a vis Iraq. The greater goal is to shift public opinion and public conscience -- it is then that the politicians will do what they always do, which is FOLLOW.