Coming out as believers in true progressive values

[starroute]

I've been coming to a few conclusions over the last week . . .

1) The left has operated for decades under a suspicion that the majority of Americans don't really share our values and that therefore we have to conceal our true nature and "buy" their votes with support for Social Security and other pocketbook issues.

2) This not only hasn't worked, it has also made us look bad in a variety of ways -- materialistic, resorting to scare tactics, without moral values of our own.

3) But our *real* problem is not that other Americans don't share our values. It's our values are not based on a traditional religous belief-system, and we're afraid to admit that. This ties our tongues and prevents us from saying what we actually do believe in.

4) Our core beliefs are holistic, evolutionary, and life-affirming. We view our country, our planet, and the universe as marvelous experiments in discovering the potentials of what it means to be conscious beings in an ever-widening frame of reference. This is true whether we consider ourselves to be religious, non-religious, or something in between.

5) Every battleground between the right and the left is defined by *our* core issues -- not theirs. We aren't arguing over obscure points of Christian theology here. We're fighting about things like respect for the web of life, acceptance of every human being as a member of the human family with full and equal privileges, and the role of humans as servants of our previous and delicate planet rather than as its jackbooted masters.

6) Somehow the right has been able to identify our core issues better than we can. They know that the teaching of evolution and sex education is a threat to their belief structures. They know that if they can trash ANWR, it will be a defeat and a humiliation for us at the very core of our being -- approximately equivalent to what spitting on the cross would be for Christians. They know what the score is -- but we keep pretending we don't, and that makes us weak.

7) However, far more of the country shares our beliefs than shares the beliefs of the extreme right. People believe in protecting the environment. People accept the validity of gay relationships. People are excited by the latest news about T. rex or Homo floresiensis. This is what turns them on -- not the fossilized and outdated belief-system of the fundies.

8) So what we need more than anything is the courage to come out and admit to what we really are. One thing we need is a good name -- "New Age" is too hippie-dippie, and "holistic" too academic-scientific. We need a name that says what we are, and that also conveys non-exclusiveness -- that you can be this new thing and still remain a Christian or a Buddhist or anything else. And we need to make it clear that we are acting out of a set of core beliefs that motivate what we do down to the very bedrock.

9) It wouldn't hurt to tie this to the founding fathers and the core beliefs of American society, either. Our Revolution took place in the name of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" -- which is to say, not the Christian god in any sense, but an early expression of our own present-day holistic belief system. We are the real Americans, not them -- but we've been too scared to notice. So let us open our eyes, cut the bonds which tie us to the past, and assume our Station among the Powers of the Earth.

[Walt Starr]

1. I disagree completely

I suggest you read Lakoff. All of America shares the Progressive values we espouse. Our difficluty has been in engaging in a debate under the terms of the regressive Conservatives. Language is importnant and they have learned it.

I even applied some of this to the above paragraph. I defined my values as Progressive, dumping the illegitimate term "liberal" which has been demonized for forty years. Jettison that bullshit phrase, it's useless and it will take forty years to redefine. I am a Progressive and am working for the Progressive Revolution.

By defining myself as Progressive, I represent my core values as being in motion in a forward direction. Anybody who dares oppose my core values is now a Regressive by definition. I further enhance that metaphor by stating specifically that my opponents are Regressive Conservatives, tieing up the two philosophical phrases in a binding action where the two cannot be seperated.

I've just won the debate without saying anything other than the fact that I represent Progressive values. As we move more deeply into defining those values, I utilize terminology and metaphors that everybody understands and sharesat their core. In the end, I dessimate my opponent by 1) Defining him, 2) defining myself as the one who wants to move forward, 3) making him the bad guy because he doesn't want to move forward.

Get the picture?

[starroute]

2. No, I think you're using completely null language

"Progressive" actually mean something back when people believed in Progress.

Progress was the great unifying creed of the 19th century -- an early version of today's notions of emergent systems and non-zero sum games.

But it was narrowly defined in terms of a faith in human rationality, in the advantages of technology, and in the superiority of Western civilization. Between World War I and the Great Depression, faith in that sort of Progress disappeared -- or dwindled into 1950's-style advocacy for superhighways and slum clearance.

These days, "Progressive" may hang on a vague, feel-good term, but it doesn't actually *mean* anything.

As far as I'm concerned, the sort of hollow word-play Lakoff advocates is one my symptom of the failure of the left to look squarely at its actually beliefs and acknowledge them in public.