Reply #132: So which is it? Is it "A belief in God" that the author wants us all...

[Zenlitened]

... to embrace and praise?

Or is it the desire for "community... caring for others... less materialism"?

Which is it? And when have the terrible, awful leftist elitists ever been against the latter?

...What I'm suggesting in this paragraph is that many of the millions of people who get attracted to the Religious Right are not motivated by excitement for their political program, but by the experience of community, caring for others, and its ability to recognize and address the deep distortions in life that are caused by a societal ethos of materialism and selfishness.

You can't undermine that attachment by arguments against what is really peripheral to their motivation. Yet there is nothing fundamentally irrational about being motivated by a desire to be part of a loving community or to want a world with less materialism and selfishness. What is irrational is that the Left is unable to see that this very desire is a positive and healthy desire, and that it could best be addressed by a progressive spiritual critique of capitalist society which is, as I show in my book, the source of the materialism and seflishness that people are seeking to escape.

Sounds as if the author is shifting terms when it suits him, moving the goalposts as necessary in order to conflate belief in god with progressive ideals. But then he's asked to clarify... and argues against Democratic god-talk:

So your view is that by claiming The Left Hand, Dems can win electoral victories. Are you suggesting that Dems should, like Hillary Clinton, affect the rhetoric of religion? Will that work?

No, it will not work. I don't believe that the Dems can trick people into voting for them. That was the major error in selecting Kerry, and that will be a huge problem for them should Hillary be the candidate. I think that Dems can win electoral victories through all kinds of tricks, but that they cannot through trickery actually be empowered to bring substantial healing to our society unless they run on an honest program that articulates a different worldview from that of the Right.

So... pandering to these presumed Repub-voting-but-Democratic-minded voters with god-talk is out. Glad to hear that.

Courting them with discussions of programs and policies aimed at implementing progressive ideals is in. Very glad to hear that, too.

But the hordes of atheists taking up the airwaves disssing religion-- wait... where are these hordes? On TV? On cable? In the newspapers? On streetcorners, preaching at passers-by?

Where is this problem? I'd argue that it doesn't exist. That, in fact, the author himself has identified the real problem: our party isn't talking up its own ideals anymore.

Why he gets bogged down in the "atheists are driving voters away" fallacy is beyond me. :shrug: