on Lieberman, the DLC and the DNC - Democratic Underground

alvarezadams

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Sat Jul-22-06 05:28 PM
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on Lieberman, the DLC and the DNC

Much time, effort and bandwidth has been expended of late on the CT primary. Yet it seems to me that for the most part we've been pussyfooting around the real issue.

Or at least one side has (IMHO) - those that defend Lieberman and the DLC.

For many of us "progressives", the 30 year-long pendulum swing to the right is unpalatable. The fact that this excessively long swing has been created, maintained and perpetuated by literally billions of dollars in corporate funding to think tanks, PR firms, lobbies and the compendium of orgs designed to indoctrinate... is very troubling indeed. Most worrying of all is that the "opposition" party (the Dems), instead of opposing the greatest danger to our very sociopolitical system, has largely embraced the "monster". This is particularly true of the DLC, funded in part by the same extreme rightwing influence groups that fund the likes of PNAC, AEI, Heritage, the Swiftboaters and the rest of the quasi-fascist gang.

The Democratic Party has never been "pure" or entirely progressive. Without entering into the now-GOP Dixiecrats, the DNC has always represented a relatively wide ideological spectrum. Until the Dixiecrats joined the GOP, the Republicans also represented a relatively wide political spectrum. The US had, until recently, plodded along on the basis of compromise - and the pendulum swings of the past merely tinged the current political waters a little blue or a little red.

Even the highpoint of the progressive DNC (the New Deal) turned into a pretty bland and shallow reform only noteworthy inasmuch our nation was so socio-politically underdeveloped as to make ANY change stick out like a sore thumb. Between Harding's US and FDR's the difference is between night and day, yet FDR only provided Americans what Europeans had enjoyed for decades. For this we must praise and blame FDR, who was able to initiate his famous legislation in the 1930's... only to reach an agreement with the corporate devils during WWII. In hindsight it seems that FDR and Truman made a tacit deal with Big Business; if you let us keep the basis of our new social legislation (which we promise not to increase), you can dip into the treasury at will (the military-industrial complex) and play a leading role in government.

Yet over the past 30 years this pact has been unilaterally broken. The neo-libs from the Austrian School, the Chicago Boys and the Thatcherite Institute of Economic Affairs joined forces with corps and conservative movements and a true conspiracy took place to turn the world back to the “good old days” of Harding. In other words an environment where the new moneyed aristocracy could hold sway without having to appease labor, environmentalists, demands for social justice, etc. Add the saber-rattling hawks and neocons and we have today’s “conservative movement”.

The American political system HAD been based on compromise and its political spectrum has always been a limited affair as a result. There has rarely been much of an ideological difference between both parties and differences have mostly been on the level of stances regarding problems, opportunities or situations that might be electorally important in any given moment. The parties USED to overlap in the middle and extremes (barring the McCarthy era in relatively recent times) didn’t have a place in our body politic.

This has all changed now. The GOP is largely under the influence of the most radical extreme ever to be seen in the US since the Civil War. Through the spending of billions and the application of modern techniques of propaganda and indoctrination the radicals have seemingly perpetuated the rightwing swing of the pendulum. And by infiltrating the opposition party the radical extremists are covering all the bases.

So what is it with Lieberman and the DLC? They maintain a progressive veneer by taking stances on talkingpoint issues – but in the key areas of economics and foreign policy their loyalties are starkly clear. And by their dismissal of “liberals” they are doing the greatest possible damage to not only the DNC but to the country. They are a 5th column that infiltrates and sabotages the last hope to stop the extremists.

I say that if they are allergic to “liberals”, let them join the GOP where they can do some good by possibly moderating that party. The DNC must draw a line and make a stand for progressive ideals – because if it doesn’t, nobody else will.

MY primary political objective is to separate business and state, a concept that even Adam Smith understood back in the 18th century. Until this is achieved our political process is polluted and corrupted and the talkingpoint issues that make up so much of our political discourse are mere minutia.

Secondarily I wish to be actually represented by a political party. From my experience most “progressives” who take the “political compass” test (http://www.politicalcompass.org/) are almost always “social libertarians” – a concept singularly unrepresented in any party in the US or abroad. We stand for social justice, individual rights, fairness and ethics. Surely if we are many, some politicians will listen….