[Peace-discuss] The source of our problems

[John W.]

Wait, Carl.... Weren't many of us "single-issue voters" in the 1970s, on the
subject of the war in Viet Nam?  You suggest that that's the cure once
again.  Strange, isn't it, that you identify the 1970s as precisely the time
when the Democratic Party began its "long right turn"?  Can you reconcile
the obvious illogic?

While you're at it, perhaps you can comment on how a LARGER bloc of
"single-issue voters" - those concerned with "law and order" - elected
Richard Nixon to the Presidency in 1968 and re-elected him in 1972, all
while the war in Viet Nam was still going on.

Over-simplification, anyone?

[Of course I too think that Amerika should get out of the imperialism
business.  The only thing that will bring that about - if anything - is our
ever-declining economy.  It'll be the same exact thing that got the Soviet
Union out of the imperialism business.]



On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 2:45 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:

 [Or, how not to be that terrible thing, a "single-issue voter." Tsk, tsk.]
>
> *The source is "...the long right turn of the Democratic Party since the
> 1970s, as financialization of the economy led to shedding New Deal
> commitments so as to compete with the Republicans for corporate patronage."
> *
> And the cure is to make the single-issue large enough.  ("Be as radical as
> reality," said Lenin.)
>
> Opposition to the war is the necessary if not sufficient first condition
> for a serious politics. What is required is "a revitalization of the
> founding tradition of civic virtue and republican values of liberty."  And
> that's what the teapartiers are calling for, even if they need to clarify
> their analysis.
>
> "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't need to worry
> about answers."
>
> Imperial war contradicts that revitalization.  And avoiding the question of
> the war disqualifies any further discussion.
>
> It's important that the Democrats do that, while the teapartiers are
> conflicted on the matter.  Although the polity is far from democratic, a
> serious defeat for the Democratic party and the concomitant rejection of
> their policies is the probably necessary beginning of an insistence on
> different - and contrasting - policies.
>
> Although it's true that no one - outside of a few Greens - are clear on the
> matter.
>
> There's work for people like us.
>
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