Strike 1, strike 2, strike 3 - you're out!
For the Left Hand of God (LHG), of all the ways Democrats are striking out, the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach is both the best and the most disturbing of the three. Let's look at the three strikes one more time:
The strength of the "avoid it like the plague approach" lies in that it's a position taken from conviction; the politician in question really doesn't believe in mixing politics and religion. LHG respects that. It's weakness, however, is fatal. It hands over the religion and values camp to Republicans on a platter. God becomes a Republican, by default.
The strength of the "hey, I'm religious too approach" is that the politician has barely tried to come up with something substantive, or even decent, to contribute to political debate. And as they say, if you don't try you can't really fail either. The weakness, however, is the same as the strength. You've barely tried, so why the hell should we vote for you?
Finally, the strength of the "if you can't beat them, join them approach" comes from a politician making a real substantive attempt to grapple with religion in relation to public policy. This is what needs to be done if Republican aren't going to play the God card by themselves. Thumbs up, so far it's the strongest of the three. The weakness, however, is also the most disturbing of them all. Think about it: You've gone beyond position one and brought religion to play with politics, you've gone beyond position two and actually TRIED; but, lo and behold, you've failed! You failed because in the process of developing a positions that bring together religion and politics you've abdicated your convictions and mimicked the Republican platform.
This is tremendously disturbing. When trying to develop a progressive approach to religion and politics the best Democrats can muster is to look like fuzzy Republicans - the Republican program with a 10% discount. Is this really the best that can be done? Is there really no room for religious discourse in a progressive political platform? Is it really true that to make room for religion the politics needs to become more conservative?
LHG, for one, refuse to believe that's the case.
The strength of the "avoid it like the plague approach" lies in that it's a position taken from conviction; the politician in question really doesn't believe in mixing politics and religion. LHG respects that. It's weakness, however, is fatal. It hands over the religion and values camp to Republicans on a platter. God becomes a Republican, by default.
The strength of the "hey, I'm religious too approach" is that the politician has barely tried to come up with something substantive, or even decent, to contribute to political debate. And as they say, if you don't try you can't really fail either. The weakness, however, is the same as the strength. You've barely tried, so why the hell should we vote for you?
Finally, the strength of the "if you can't beat them, join them approach" comes from a politician making a real substantive attempt to grapple with religion in relation to public policy. This is what needs to be done if Republican aren't going to play the God card by themselves. Thumbs up, so far it's the strongest of the three. The weakness, however, is also the most disturbing of them all. Think about it: You've gone beyond position one and brought religion to play with politics, you've gone beyond position two and actually TRIED; but, lo and behold, you've failed! You failed because in the process of developing a positions that bring together religion and politics you've abdicated your convictions and mimicked the Republican platform.
This is tremendously disturbing. When trying to develop a progressive approach to religion and politics the best Democrats can muster is to look like fuzzy Republicans - the Republican program with a 10% discount. Is this really the best that can be done? Is there really no room for religious discourse in a progressive political platform? Is it really true that to make room for religion the politics needs to become more conservative?
LHG, for one, refuse to believe that's the case.
posted by elivo at 12:01 AM
2 Comments:
dear confucius-pillar, thanks for providing the first substantive comment to this blog. let me get this straight: you think that the failure of vision in the democratic party is not merely a failure of leadership, but also a failure of the base at large? the base is as corrupt and vapid as the leadership? if so, how do you explain dean's popularity? he was the one person who tried to provide some vision - and it seems to the LHG that he lost due to the machinations of the democratic establishment rather than out of a failure of heart from the base.
I sympathize with a lot of your analysis - but I tend to disagree with your last statement. It seems to me that Democrats must NOT play by the rules of the game; that is, they must strive to change those rules. That should be their vision, otherwise there's no way of escaping the role of being the party with the 10% discount.
Different rules! That's the rallying cry (until we've got something better)
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