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 oggleman
Stranger
Registered: 01/21/04
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 Thread for tha liberals. 
#3319526 - 11/04/04 11:40 AM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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We all noticed it, the democrats got trampled this tuesday, but the question is why, but more importantly, how do we fix it?
It is obvious that the democratic party is going to have to do some revamping to chip away at the republican ownage of washington.
I feel that the reason we got our asses kicked is because we've lost sight of and compromised the ideals the democratic party was founded on, which makes us less credible. The "flip-flopping" done by kerry is representative of the problem with so many dems.
The democratic party, then called the democratic-republican party, was formed in reaction to the elitist federalist party, to attract sheer numbers of minorities, lower income citizens, and anyone feeling disinfranchised. Running on a platform of all inclusion, equal wealth distribution, workers' rights, scientific progress, and so on. We are the party that advocated women's suffrage and the popular election of senators. I think we have lost sight of those ideals and let ourselves be intimidated, or persuaded, by conservatives, to compromise our beliefs to where we are nothing more than watered down versions of them.
So now the interesting question, what will the dems do to fix this next time around? I see 2 options: 1)We will simply compromise further to the right, in order to directly appeal to more republican supporters. Unfortunately, I suspect this is what is going to happen. However, we could do 2)Take a stand on our beliefs and re-affirm our liberal roots of all-inclusion and defense of the common man, so we can be like "look, this is who we are, like it or not", bush has proven in this last election that this can be a successful strategy.
Example: Gay Marriage. Bush said gay marriage is a threat to the stability of the institution of marriage, so we must amend the constitution to protect that institution. Its black and white, easy to understand, accessible. Kerry said marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman but we shouldn't amend the constitution to restrict gay marriage because it isn't necessary. Thats a little less clear-cut, and it confuses and alienates the anti-intellectuals who are the majority of this country. IMO Kerry should have just come out and said restricting gays and lesbians from the institution of marriage is discriminatory, and no law should make such a restriction as it is a violation of the constitution. That would have been taking more of a stand, and I feel the type of stand the democratic party is supposed to represent.
Anybody else with thoughts on this?
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 Innvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Registered: 02/08/01
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Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: oggleman]
#3319540 - 11/04/04 11:45 AM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
The democratic party, then called the democratic-republican party, was formed in reaction to the elitist federalist party
a rose by any other name...
Quote:
2)Take a stand on our beliefs and re-affirm our liberal roots of all-inclusion and defense of the common man, so we can be like "look, this is who we are, like it or not",
I hope they try this approach instead of masking it from the public.
I think the libbies lost because they don't have any plans to back up their ideas.
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America....FUCK YEAH!!!
Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
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AntiMeme
yankee doodledandy
Registered: 08/11/04
Posts: 208
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: oggleman]
#3319566 - 11/04/04 11:52 AM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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The only thing they actually could do, short of abandoning any last remnants of human decency, is to embrace religion. Sad but true.
I suggest emigration. Alternatively, seceding and leaving Jesus Land alone sounds like a good idea.
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oggleman
Stranger
Registered: 01/21/04
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: AntiMeme]
#3319607 - 11/04/04 12:02 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Emigration is a valid choice for any individual, however proposing it as a method of democratic reform is a little silly. Like an entire political party is going to emigrate...
Seceding is a good idea except for the fact that we fought a civil war to preserve the union, and it would probably take another one to break it up.
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retread
-=HasH=-
Registered: 07/14/04
Posts: 851
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: Innvertigo]
#3320057 - 11/04/04 01:45 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Innvertigo said:
I think the libbies lost because they don't have any plans to back up their ideas.
Dude, John Kerry had a plan. He must have said so 500 times. Now as to what the plan entailed, I guess we will never know.
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Rose
Devil's Advocate
 
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: retread]
#3320067 - 11/04/04 01:46 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
retread said:
Quote:
Innvertigo said:
I think the libbies lost because they don't have any plans to back up their ideas.
Dude, John Kerry had a plan. He must have said so 500 times. Now as to what the plan entailed, I guess we will never know.
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Fiddlesticks.
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Innvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Registered: 02/08/01
Posts: 16,296
Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: retread]
#3320076 - 11/04/04 01:47 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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well it would of been nice if he would of shared his plan to fix social security, healthcare, schools, jobs etc.
When liberals open up and be honest about their intentions they tend to lose votes, i'm hoping they tell us in the next election of their intentions.
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America....FUCK YEAH!!!
Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
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Ancalagon
AgnosticLibertarian
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: oggleman]
#3320281 - 11/04/04 02:40 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Anybody else with thoughts on this?
Yeah, you need a true history lesson so badly it hurts. That post was filled with so much revisionist garbage it boggles the mind. No offense intended. Here are two articles that deal with this issue in a factual manner:
'04: The Most Important Election Is Over
by Gary North
It's over. There is no doubt in my mind that the Presidential election of '04 was by far the most important election of the century. The American people had a real choice, and they made it.
The fork of the road is now behind us. We have clearly crossed the Rubicon. The United States will never be the same again.
You may be skeptical. You may think the election was an echo, not a choice. You're wrong. This was a turning point comparable to the election of Abraham Lincoln.
The wrong man won. Frankly, I don't think the country will ever fully recover.
I am of course speaking of the landslide defeat of Alton B. Parker. When, in 1904, Teddy Roosevelt defeated him by 336 Electoral College votes to 140, it was over for the Old Democracy. Immediately after the election, William Jennings Bryan, whose "cross of gold" speech in 1896 had won him the Presidential nomination, and who had won it again in 1900, announced the obituary of "Clevelandism," as he called it, and so it was. Bryan would win the nomination again in 1908.
ALTON B. WHO?
Of all Democratic Presidential nominees since Horatio Seymour (1868), Alton B. Parker is the least known. Some of you nit-pickers may try to counter with Winfield Scott Hancock (1880), but General Hancock at least got considerable publicity in Ted Turner's Gettysburg. I will admit that John W. Davis gave Parker a run for his money in the forgotten Democratic nominee sweepstakes for his candidacy in 1924, but because he won the nomination on the 103rd ballot, he made his way into the history textbooks. No other convention has ever been that deadlocked. Davis also gained additional fame by more than matching his 1924 defeat when, thirty years later, he lost the most culture-changing Supreme Court case of modern times, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), in which the arguments of Thurgood Marshall, which had no Constitutional precedents to support them, persuaded the Court by a 9 to 0 vote. So, when it comes to obscurity, Parker's the one.
If you go to Google and search for "Alton," "Parker," and "1904," you will find a handful of encyclopedia entries of perhaps three brief paragraphs. Parker was not dropped down the memory hole; he descended on his own authority.
Parker was the last Presidential major party nominee who openly campaigned in support of the gold standard. In fact, he was so committed to the gold standard that, prior to his nomination, he telegraphed the convention to insist that it not nominate him if it did not agree with his views.
The Old Democracy had been hard-money, all the way back to Andrew Jackson and his war against the Second Bank of the United States. Grover Cleveland was the last great defender of the gold standard elected by the Democrats. His wing of the Democratic Party preached hard money and low tariffs.
This wing had been undermined by the unexpected success of Bryan in 1896. Constitutionally, Bryan's defense of silver over gold was probably correct. The dollar in 1787 had been a Spanish silver "piece of eight." But in Bryan's eloquent speeches, silver was a means of inflation. He opposed gold because the gold standard kept rural banks from issuing more credit. Bryan was a radical. He favored easy money, Federal regulatory legislation, and a laundry list of populist and socialist schemes. He prided himself of being the most radical politician in American history. A case to this effect is still plausible, especially in comparison with the candidates of his era.
Bryan understood that Parker, a New Yorker in Cleveland's mold, was a threat to his eight-year hijacking of the Party. Although he had fought Parker's nomination at the convention, Bryan formally supported Parker after the convention. Parker was a strong anti-imperialist, and had said so in his nomination acceptance speech. This was a position shared by Bryan. Bryan still planned another run at the Presidency. He supported Parker for the sake of Party loyalty. But he rejoiced at the results in 1904. He predicted that Clevelandism, if not dead, would not soon revive. It never has.
Parker received financial support from the Morgan banking interests, just as Cleveland had before him. But, then as now, Insider money was spent on both candidates. Roosevelt came to beg money from Henry Clay Frick, the steel magnate, and his friends. This led Frick to admit years later in a classic summary of what had taken place. "He got down on his knees to us. We bought the son of a bitch and then he did not stay bought."
Only a handful of specialists in the Progressive era are familiar with Parker. George Mowry, who a half-century ago was the reigning expert on Republican progressivism, wrote of this of Parker's campaign.
Parker did protest against "the rule of individual caprice," the presidential "usurpation of authority," and the "aggrandizement of personal power." But his more positive proposals were so backward-looking, as for example his proposal to let state legislatures and the common law develop a remedy for the trust problem, that the New York World characterized the campaign as a struggle of "conservative and constitutional Democracy against radical and arbitrary Republicanism." [Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900?1912 (1958), p. 178.]
The New York World had it exactly right.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE PROGRESSIVES
In 1908, Bryan ran against William Howard Taft. Taft was Roosevelt's hand-picked successor. While Teddy liked to be known as a trust-buster, Taft's administration was even more aggressive. It was under Taft in 1911 that Standard Oil of New Jersey was broken up by the U.S. government, whereupon the company's senior management decided to shift from dominating the kerosene market to producing gasoline. Standard Oil then got much bigger and far richer than it had been prior to 1911.
Taft was a Progressive. He was an interventionist domestically and internationally. So was Roosevelt. So was Woodrow Wilson. They all ran in 1912. In 1912, the consummate "echo, not a choice" Presidential election took place, the election in which it was "heads, the State wins; tails, the State wins; and if the coin lands on its side, the State wins."
In 1908, it was Progressivism vs. Populism. It was "banking interventionism" vs. "pitchfork interventionism." In 1912, it was strictly Progressive interventionism: the Rockefeller banking interest vs. the Morgan banking interest. It has remained such ever since.
CONCLUSION
The last opportunity that the non-Progressivist Old Democracy had at the national level was 1904. Bryan saw clearly that its defeat had put an end to the limited-government philosophy that had guided the Democratic Party ever since the days of Jefferson.
So, let us shed a tear for the election of '04. Let us then drink a toast to Alton B. Parker. "To the loser who set the pattern. It was all downhill after him."
Some Free Advice to Democrats
by William L. Anderson
John Kerry has just begun his concession speech as I write the first words of this piece, so there can be no doubt that the Democrats have managed to lose an election that last spring seemed to belong to whichever candidate would spend the requisite number of nights in a Holiday Inn. (For the patrician Kerry, no doubt it was the Hyatt Regency, but no matter, it was not one of his five mansions and it was a hotel, after all.)
Beginning today, Democrats will begin to discuss just how the heck they managed to lose this one. The economy is fairly stagnant, the war in Iraq is going badly, everyone knows that Al-Qaeda is going to strike hard here in the near future, and Bush?s approval ratings have stayed below 50 percent for more than a year. In other words, the Republicans generously had set the table for Democrats, only to find that once again those jackasses had decided to eat at McDonald?s.
No doubt, one person who will be listening to this concession speech is Hillary Clinton, who certainly is going to be a candidate in 2008 ? unless bin Laden kills enough of us between now and then to deny us a quorum. I have some advice for Democrats who believe that Hillary is The Answer: Don?t even go there. If you think that the Christian fundamentalists crowded the polls to stop Kerry, just wait until Hillary is on the ballot. Entire congregations of fundamentalist and evangelical churches will line up at the voting booths. Hillary, please stay in New York and write more bad books. Since government already has performed the equivalent of a nuclear blast on the state?s economy in the upstate, your presence cannot make things there any worse. Quit while you have the title of Senator.
The Democrats have a much deeper problem than the incompetence of their presidential candidates. After all, Bill Clinton steamrolled a couple of Republicans on his way to serving two terms, and that was with one hand (and Ross Perot) tied behind his back. No, the problem isn?t charisma or the lack thereof. Instead, every Democrat wants to emulate the party?s Big Hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Let me suggest a new hero for Democrats, a person whose integrity could not be challenged, and who governed as well as any president in the last century: Grover Cleveland.
In my opinion, Cleveland was the last great U.S. president, a man who took his duties to "protect and defend" the U.S. Constitution to heart. He governed as a true liberal, recognizing the dangers of the overreaching state. On the pressing issues of this past campaign, let us look at what the present candidates said and what Cleveland would have done.
War in Iraq
This one is easy. Cleveland would not have invaded that hapless country. He would have understood how overbearing U.S. foreign policy needlessly has created countless enemies abroad. Had Cleveland been in Kerry?s place, he would have called for a withdrawal of troops ? and a heartfelt apology to the Iraqis for having destroyed their country. (I think that Howard Dean was saying the same thing, but after the pro-war Democrats ganged up on him in Iowa, that anti-war option for the party was ended. No wonder Dean gave such a primal scream afterward.)
Medical Care
Grover Cleveland never would have permitted the government to have the stranglehold of controls that now guarantees that we will pay more for less care. Cleveland easily would have recognized that the continual process of making doctors and patients wards of the state would have predictable results. I suspect that he would have called for government agents to end the occupation of hospitals and doctors? offices ? la Iraq.
Economic Growth
Between taxes, government spending, regulation that grows faster than a cancer cell and the expansion of the categories of "white collar crime," the amazing thing is not that we have relatively low growth and high unemployment, but that this economy creates any wealth at all. It is testament to the institution of private property (which is quickly disappearing in this fair land) and the relentless drive of entrepreneurs ? the same ones that the political classes want to have consigned to the dungeons.
Cleveland was mindful of how government can choke a healthy economy. Furthermore, he realized the problems associated with government taking money from one set of people and giving it to favored constituents. (He once vetoed a bill that was to send $10,000 to cotton farmers in Texas who were suffering weather-related crop damage. In so doing, he declared that "the people support the government, but the government cannot support the people." Would be that a person of such wisdom were to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue today.
Most Democrats today consider Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the standard of the party, just as Republicans like to call themselves the "party of Lincoln." As far as I am concerned, you can let them have Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Should you have any doubts, contact Tom DiLorenzo who can tell you everything you need to know about these two scoundrels.
The closest thing that Republicans can have as heroes are Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, but even in their best moments they could not compare to Cleveland as defenders of freedom and men who understood the predations of the state. But FDR is NOT a hero. How can a man who extended the life of this country?s worst economic calamity, the Great Depression, be anything but a villain? Here is someone who openly assaulted the U.S. Constitution and made mockery of liberty.
No, Democrats need a real hero, one that will resonate with the electorate. Cleveland was a man of principle, someone who believed that his job was to restrain those forces of government that will enslave a country; FDR?s mantra was "there are no limits to the growth of the state."
Just think how people might have reacted to John Kerry quoting Cleveland, and promising to protect the rights of individuals. Instead, we got someone who tried to out "law-and-order" the Republicans. Just as the Republicans cannot outdo the Democrats on promoting the welfare state (although the Republicans are trying to do just that), Democrats cannot successfully run on expanding the police state.
Yes, going to such a platform and embracing Grover Cleveland would mean that there would be major cracks in the current coalitions that keep the Democrats together. But let?s face it; the Democrats no longer are a real political party. Democrats are a hodgepodge of the very wealthy (from inherited wealth), the educated elite (such as my favorite "distorian," Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.), the very poor, minority groups, rabid environmentalists, feminists, and the American Trial Lawyers Association, which funds this whole unwieldy operation.
A coalition is not a political party. Cleveland presided over a real political party, one whose members believed in individual rights, the sanctity of private property and contract, limited government, and principles of non-intervention abroad. That this organization was hijacked first by William Jennings Bryan in 1896 (running on a platform of silver-based inflation, a reminder of the days that even inflationists wanted "sound" money as compared with Alan Greenspan today) and the warmongering Woodrow Wilson in 1912 does not take away from what the Democrats once believed.
The roots of the Republicans are statism, corporate welfare, destruction of the Constitution, and war without end. No one hijacked them; their brief dalliances with libertarianism are the exception, not the norm. Some Republicans may talk against Big Government, but at least at one time the Democrats actually were identified by their enmity to the Leviathan State.
So, my advice to the Democrats is this: go back to your roots. Let the Republicans have Leviathan. If you choose liberty, private property, and a real rollback of the state, you will win election after election. In fact, you will become a real political party again.
In the aftermath of this latest election loss, remember this one important point: you never will win national elections trying to out-Republican the Republicans. No, you can win if and only if you once again become real Democrats.
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?When Alexander the Great visted the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.?
-Henry Hazlitt in 'Economics in One Lesson'
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Worf
Lt. Commander
Registered: 07/04/04
Posts: 15,663
Loc: Final Frontier
Last seen: 10 years, 3 months
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: Ancalagon]
#3320406 - 11/04/04 03:15 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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I pretty much said the same thing as that last article in my "what democrats need to do" thread. More civil rights liberalism, and less fiscal liberalism.
I do agree that most democrats model themselves after FDR. I think this is a mistake because we are not in a depression and do not need to spend like he did. It's time to invent a new strategy or model after someone else.
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Ancalagon
AgnosticLibertarian
Registered: 07/30/02
Posts: 1,364
Last seen: 14 years, 3 months
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: Worf]
#3320595 - 11/04/04 04:07 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
I pretty much said the same thing as that last article in my "what democrats need to do" thread. More civil rights liberalism, and less fiscal liberalism.
Um, just taking a look at what you wrote in the first post of this thread...
The democratic party, then called the democratic-republican party, was formed in reaction to the elitist federalist party, to attract sheer numbers of minorities, lower income citizens, and anyone feeling disinfranchised.
Well it was formed more as an antethesis to the mercantalism and imperialism supported by the federalist party, but you are right that it did, at that time, tend to attract the common man -- and without promising government favors too, imagine that.
Running on a platform of all inclusion, equal wealth distribution, workers' rights, scientific progress, and so on.
Wealth distribution, are you kidding me? Thomas Jefferson was the first President to come from the party -- not exactly the strongest advocate of wealth distribution. The Democratic-Republican party was based on the CLASSIC liberalism that the libertarian movement now represents: limited government, individual liberty, free markets, sound money, and peace.
We are the party that advocated women's suffrage and the popular election of senators.
Those measures came after the party lost its track(after Grover Cleveland). While the first of those was obviously great, the second was quite bad. Remember, this country was and is not supposed to be a Democracy. The Senate was supposed to represent the states while the House was supposed to represent the people -- the direct election of senators simply furthered to destroy the federalist system of government that is neccesary to prevent tyranny.
I do agree that most democrats model themselves after FDR. I think this is a mistake because we are not in a depression and do not need to spend like he did. It's time to invent a new strategy or model after someone else.
HE didn't need to spend like he did. He single handedly obliterated the purpose of the Constitution(specifically the tenth amendment) all the while PROLONGING THE GREAT DEPRESSION.
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?When Alexander the Great visted the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.?
-Henry Hazlitt in 'Economics in One Lesson'
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Annapurna1
liberal pussy
Registered: 05/21/02
Posts: 5,646
Loc: innsmouth..MA
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: AntiMeme]
#3320602 - 11/04/04 04:09 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
AntiMeme said:
The only thing they actually could do, short of abandoning any last remnants of human decency, is to embrace religion. Sad but true.
many liberals..myself included..have been under the delusion that freedom of religion and separation of church and state somehow makes america a non-christian nation...of course..nothing could be further from the truth..and if we want to push our social agenda..it must be done within that religious framework..irregardless of ones' own personal religious beliefs...
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"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...
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Worf
Lt. Commander
Registered: 07/04/04
Posts: 15,663
Loc: Final Frontier
Last seen: 10 years, 3 months
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: Ancalagon]
#3320668 - 11/04/04 04:23 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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I said the last quote but I don't know where you got the other ones.
If he didn't spend as much as he did there would have been a revolution. Simple as that.
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oggleman
Stranger
Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 281
Loc: Chicago
Last seen: 17 years, 3 months
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: Worf]
#3320824 - 11/04/04 04:55 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Whatever. All this bickering and arguing, and nit-picking of arguments to say, "oohh your wrong, see, look at this link", this is exactly what I'm talking about. This WAS NOT a thread intended to have the validity the democratic party or liberalism cross-examined. I have no desire to differentiate between economic liberalism and social liberalism, as it is another example of an issue which simply divides and weakens us. This was supposed to be a thread to brainstorm ideas as to why liberalism has been so demonized, and what we can do about it. I was trying to start discussion of how we can make our message and beliefs more accessible to a wider range of people without having to shift our beliefs to the right. I also believe that we don't have to embrace religion to make our message more accessible. I now realize that this is not the forum to have such a thread, as libs are such a minority here.
We are the party of balanced budgets, we are the party of housing the homeless and putting people back to work, we are the party of affordable healthcare, we are the party of improved education, we are the party of environmental protection. Those are our ideals, like it or not. There is no reason why fear of terrorism and tax cuts should trump all these issues.
I'm sure this post will be sliced up and refuted sentence by sentence, and be my guest.
Have a nice day.
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Worf
Lt. Commander
Registered: 07/04/04
Posts: 15,663
Loc: Final Frontier
Last seen: 10 years, 3 months
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Re: Thread for tha liberals. [Re: oggleman]
#3321337 - 11/04/04 06:48 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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I don't think we need to embrace religion so much as we have to respect values. The religion card has already been won, and if democrats try to go after it they will be seen as only trying to embrace religion for votes.
The reason why liberalism has such a bad connotations is because of propogranda from various sources. When people think of a liberal they think of high taxes, socialism, gun control, etc.
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