Unions are going extinct. This is because communities themselves are going extinct. When you lived in a community and everyone did more or less the same thing, such as work in the factories or the mills or the mines or the docks or whatever, then it made sense to be in a union. No one was going anywhere and no one was going to change jobs because no one was going to live a different life. Solidarity made sense, senority made sense, union rules made sense, being in a union for life made sense.

But none of that makes sense anymore. People today are free to live anywhere and work at any job and no one even has to know what their neighbors do or what their names are. The idea that you should spend the rest of your life inside a union and do the same thing forever along with your union mates and neighbors is just not something that happens to very many people these days.

For both good and bad, we live in a world of ever increasing freedom. We're free from communities, free from our neighbors, we're even free in many cases from streets and sidewalks. There's no such thing as a sense of solidarity or commonality that can be invoked by the political parties. Nobody is going to run out in the streets and strike against the corporations or the government or against anything else. There are no streets anymore! And if there are any streets, we wouldn't even know any of the people in those streets if we could even get them out there.

A liberal political party will have to recognize this fact. It will have to create its own virtual community out of an ever changing set of free individuals. It will likely have to set itself up as a news organization. It will have to make arguments to people. It will have talk philosophy and have a set of principles that it stands for. It can't just be a collection of groups. People just don't belong to groups anymore. A political party these days needs to win individual minds, not groups.

A liberal political philosophy would have to be anti-libertarian. Such a philosophy would revolve around the concept that we the people have an active right and duty to make choices though our own government to control and better our own society and our own lives. We don't have to be helpless in the face of change, we don't have to passively wait for the rich to somehow finally get enough money and enough goodness in their hearts to take care of us. Instead we can take charge of our own world and create our own future. This is just a start at the kind of liberal philosophy that ought to resonate with free individuals in a very free world.

In the large scheme of things, Obama is small potatoes.

It's the Democratic party you need to think about. If the Democratic party can't pass real health care reform with 60 votes in the Senate, then the question needs to be asked: what good is the Democratic party?

The Democratic party needs to understand that its future is on the line in this matter. If the Democratic party can't pass health care reform with a public option, which itself is ALREADY a compromise, then why should liberals support the Democratic party? I think would be time to form a new party. This is the only way to give the Democratic party a backbone. Let them know they'll hang if they fail. If they won't hang, why should they care?

Now as far as the Republican party, they are down on the ropes at this very moment. They've shot their wad with many people and this presents an opportunity for real change. The country is in fact becoming more liberal and in fact will no longer be majority white in a few years. So the time is ripe for a party that actually caters to liberals and doesn't just take them for granted. If the Democrats don't want to be that party, then some other party has to do it.

A split in the Democratic party could finish off the Republicans, as the more conservative wing of the party would likely absorb and replace them. Or, the conservative wing of the Democrats may join what remains of the Republicans. In either case, the Republicans will be moderated by in a flux of centerist Democrats and the county will become center left and not center right as it is now.

So the question for you, Joan, is what will you do if the Democratic party fails to pass real health care reform, with a public option? Will you just go along? Or will you finally stand up and draw a line?