Letters to the Editor
healthyskeptic
Published Letters: 671 Editor's Choice: 14
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@-- ondelette's poltical history of excuses
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The way ondelette describes it, it was all just bad luck and a failure to be more radically left. BS.
Nixon was socially and economically left on many issues by today's standards. Point being, at that point even the right had to concede the popularity of left agenda. Though, it hadn't yet become "radicalism" or "counter culture" and was basically a natural evolution of culture towards liberalism (as we see in all developed countries) and Keynesisan economics, which have nothing to do with hippies, marxists, and the counter-culture. Nixon was (aside from his crimes) on the policy issues he campaigned for, actually part of an evolution to the left.
During his presidency was when the counter culture movement really exploded, in part reaction against the Vietnam war, which then itself got out of control, and extended to anti-authoritarianism, drug culture, radicalism for radicalism sake, and all the other negatives of the hippy and CC movement.
A large part of Reagan's success was campaigning on social and economic conservatism as a direct response to the CC movement, which won him huge victories across the right, the middle, and much of the left. It was all BS, but he got away with it in part because people were sick of the CC movement by then, and wanted his "shining city on a hill" with relatively more conservatism.
That's also when fundies began getting involved in organized politics, feeling they had to oppose the CCM, even though they had avoided politics beforehand. GWBush and Rove are direct descendants of that.
GWBush and the fundies are in part a creation of blowback from the overly radical and inflammatory CCM.
Just as OBL is in part a creation of rt wing militancy in Afghanistan and the ME.
Just as the blowback coming against religious radicalism in the USA will have been created in part by the recent power grab by fundies.
All this radical BS always produces a lot of blowback and instability doing more harm than good, and stunting America's evolution.
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@ bucky1
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]what is "left" to you?
Technically, I mean issues which, by and large, the left of the electorate support at any given moment. By left, I mean if you divided policy into pro/con, and weighed them on a scale, the point at which it would tip left.
So for example of a mainstream "left" to center/left issue, take healthcare reform. There are various proposals, having more or less profit, more single payer or more market, etc along typical left/right ideological divides.
As a practical example, the black civil rights movement of the 50s deliberately avoided the issue of gay rights, because it was a fringe issue. They instead focused on what they could acheive, and helped evolved the culture. Had they taken on gay rights, they would have been stopped dead in thier tracks, helping neither black civil rights or gays, and quite possibly getting both persecuted worse.
Similarly, Lincoln didn't attempt to completely integrate society after the civil war, as it was a fringe belief at the time. Had he done so, he would have alienated a lot of white northerners, and caused the South to win and quite likely have preserved slavery longer.
An example on the other side: some fringe fundamentalists want to completely erode the barrier between church and state, and we see the blowback from that already. Historically, prohibition was another example of overreach from the right which helped usher in an era of increased liberalism.
That's what I mean by fringe. Positions that are so unpopular, fighting for them is the surest way to assure one's own defeat and ruin a whole host of associated issues. Or worst of all, if one manages to win somehow in the short term, it assures the blowback will be all the worse.
That's the political reality, and frankly the human condition. A lot of these young, ideological, and rather clueless political enthusiasts recently come to politics though blogs, are a lot like the hippies. They're all hyped on utopian notions of activism changing the world more rapidly than reality will allow, really don't know what they're doing, and tend to just create more blowback.
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counter culture movement
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]anti-authoritarianism" (is this "out of control"?)
Yes, anti-authoritarianism, for it's own sake, most certainly is detrimental, and tends to encourage a kind of snowballing mob mentality where every authority is automatically not, creating a kind of insane feedback loop. On the left and right it usually takes the form of anti-intellectualism, and the worst kinds of populism.
In China for example the "cultural revolution" snowballed from legitimate complaints against corrupt government, that grew into a lynch mob where anyone educated was considered a conspirator, and the majority of Chinese continue to be dirt poor.
In the American CC movement of the 60s, it led to drug culture where being "radical" and "far-out" were goals in themselves. There had always been a very small counter-culture movement, bohemians and such, but they were very small and relatively far more conservative compared with hippies. Hippies were far more radical, aimless, and numerous than previous CC movements, and they inspired far greater blowback from the right and middle.
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radical bloback
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Another blowback from China's radical cultural revolution is that by having failed to provide a stable and practical solution to China's woes, is now facing a rapid swing of the pendulum towards rampant corruption and unfettered capitalism and classism, again. If they don;t find some middle ground and stop the pendulum soon, they could be right back where they started, the worse for wear with bloody wars, economic famine, and other colapse.
Just as the radical left's failure to establish a workable and practical society, as opposed to a lot of dope smoking and hippies, also prompted a radical swing back to the right.
Point being, radicalism doesn't establish functional cultural models, promote cultural cohesion, or otherwise take root in the mainstream. It actually just provokes instability as the pendulum oscillates more violently, and may come completely unhinged and collapse, for a net stagnation or even regression.