Cross-posted on Horse Head Soup:
In recent weeks I have been posting on the Daily Kos after an absence of nearly two years. The experience has been surprising, and has forced me to carefully examine some of my own views. I have always considered myself to be a "liberal" in the American sense of the term, i.e. occupying a place on the political left. But what I have found is that while I certainly hold many views that are in accordance with mainstream left-wing beliefs, I have others that many liberals would likely find abhorrent.
Whenever the subject comes up, I rarely miss the opportunity to describe myself as a socialist. Not because of my Obama-like hatred of freedom, but because I genuinely think that socialism is the fairest way to set up a society. Don't get me wrong, I have no opposition to wealth. Indeed, I would love to be rich -- who wouldn't? What I am opposed to, though, is the obscene imbalance in opportunity and quality of life that comes along with huge disparities in wealth. I believe that it is the responsibility of government to alleviate such disparities.
Now, right-wingers (or at least the ones who can string together a coherent sentence, you betcha) would call this "redistribution of wealth." To which I would respond, "Yup." I think it is perfectly acceptable to redistribute wealth. It's wealth. By its very definition the word implies that those who have it have enough to spare. There are 403 billionaires in the United States. Billionaires. Guess how many there were prior to 1986? Thirteen. The growth of private wealth in this country has gotten out of control. There is no good reason for any one person to have so much money. Taxes on the wealthiest Americans need to be much higher than they are now. I am not usually a fan of Michael Moore; I think he plays fast and loose with the truth and does nothing more than preach to the choir. But he makes an excellent observation in his film Capitalism: A Love Story, which is that at one time in this country the top tax rate was a whopping 90%, and yet the rich still managed to live like kings. So, yeah, a little redistribution won't kill them.
So what to do with all that money? I'd start with true universal health care, provided free to all citizens by the government. But that's SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!!! What about the death panels and the huge government bureaucracy?!? Why do you HATE AMERICA? Must... resist... urge to kill... I am so sick of this fatuous right-wing "argument," if you can even call it that. They don't have death panels in Canada or England or Germany or France or Sweden or the Netherlands or Denmark or Belgium or any of the many, many, many other developed countries -- in fact, all developed countries, except us -- that have national health care. And as far as bureaucracies go, I'll place my trust in one that is answerable to citizens, not shareholders, thank you very much.
I love socialized medicine. I love it because I believe a society should strive to be fair and just, and in such a society health care should not be a privilege, it should be a right. I love it because I believe that the private insurance industry will always, always place profits above people's welfare. And, if I am being completely honest with myself, I love it for the reasons described by the website Stuff White People Like:
But the secret reason why all white people love socialized medicine is that they all love the idea of receiving health care without having a full-time job. This would allow them to work as a freelance designer/consultant/copywriter/photographer/blogger, open their own bookstore, stay at home with their kids, or be a part of an Internet start-up without having to worry about a benefits package. Though many of them would never follow this path, they appreciate having the option.
Hey, at least I admit it! Heh.
Alright, what else? I think college should be free, or at least very, very inexpensive. But here I may diverge from standard liberal orthodoxy, because I do not believe that college is for everyone. In fact, in my opinion the pervasive belief that everyone should go to college has only served to cheapen the importance of a college education. It is just expected now that everyone has a bachelor's degree, such that a bachelor's degree has lost much of its former significance. If you need evidence of this, you need look no further than the vast number of people now getting master's degrees for jobs that once required only a bachelor's. How long before they become a prerequisite, too? Where does it end? Will there eventually come a day when you have to have a PhD to work at Starbuck's?
This ties into my belief that higher education in this country is a profit-generating scam. But that's a separate rant. For our purposes here I will say simply that I think if you have the demonstrated ability and interest in college, then you should not have to pay for it. For the rest, there should be other kinds of post-secondary education and job training. And the jobs for which those institutions prepare people should be able to provide the kind of income that makes it possible to have a home, a family, and a good life. You shouldn't have to spend six years in college to have a shot at the American dream.
I think the US military should be much smaller than it is. It does not require a vast war machine with global reach to defend our vital national interests. I believe we should completely withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. And yes, I realize that would leave a power vacuum that would either be filled by Iran and the Taliban. But here's the thing: Iran wants to be a respected country, a player on the world stage. So let them. If a country has a sphere of influence and interests of its own to protect, it is not going to squander them. Nikita Khrushchev may have banged his shoe on the podium and threaten to bury us, but it didn't happen. Despite all the saber-rattling and posturing, there never was a shooting war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The same will happen with Iran -- once they have something to lose, they won't want to lose it.
As to the Taliban: Yes, they're bad people. But our presence in Afghanistan does nothing to mitigate the threat they pose. If anything we're only exacerbating the problem. Iran funds the Taliban now, but they do so to make trouble for us. They have no cultural or ideological affinity to each other. In fact, if the US wasn't in Afghanistan, it probably would not be long before the Taliban turned their sights to expelling the Iranian foreigners, as well. And the Taliban, while heinous, poses little danger to the security of the United States. Yes, the have provided a safe haven for Al Qaeda. But we can monitor that, and when three or more of them get together we can rain destruction upon them from the sky. Is it a perfect solution? Certainly not. But it's better than squandering billions of dollars and thousands of American lives on a fool's errand. The British and Soviet empires couldn't tame Afghanistan -- what in the world makes us think we can?
If we cut the size of the military in half we would have billions of dollars to spend on things like infrastructure, long overlooked in this country. You want jobs? Think of all the jobs that could be created improving our power grid, fixing our bridges and roads, and wiring every home in America for broadband internet. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Okay, so far so good. Nothing too out of line with prevailing progressive wisdom, right? Hang on to your hats.
I think multiculturalism is a bad idea. In fact, I agree with the recent assertion by German chancellor Angela Merkel that multiculturalism has been a failure.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't think there's any reason why a society can't be multiethnic. But that's not the same thing as multicultural. I believe culture is the glue that holds a society together. And by "culture" I mean things like shared beliefs, heritage, language, values, social mores, goals, and practices. In my opinion, for a society to be successful it must have broad agreement in these areas. Not that it needs to be some kind of hive mind, with no variation whatsoever between individuals. Not at all. But neither can you have competing cultural values on a large scale.
Language is a good example. I believe (and here I differ sharply from most progressives) that English should be the national language of the United States, and that proficiency in English should be a prerequisite for citizenship. Why? Because I believe it is incumbent upon immigrants to adapt to the social and cultural norms of their new home. If I wanted to move to Sweden, for example, I would expect to have to learn Swedish and acclimate myself to Swedish cultural norms. I would drive a Volvo, listen to Abba, and assiduously follow the progress of the Swedish Bikini Team, for example. Seriously, though, when you move to a new country (or even a new region) you also move to a new culture. The host should not be expected to change to suit the wishes of new arrivals. We should welcome immigration, for sure. But we should do so with the expectation that those who come here do so because they want to be part of our culture as well as our country.
So I'm not sure exactly where I fall. I vote Democratic because I am a pragmatist. I recognize that the only two realistic choices are Democrat or Republican. And I believe that the Republican party is evil. I don't use that word lightly, or with a sense of hyperbole. I believe they are truly evil. I think they are controlled by a coalition of greedy, rapacious business interests and repressive religious fanatics, who if they had their way would transform the United States into a two-class society of wealthy elites who were effectively above the law, and a poor underclass under the heel of an evangelical Christian theocracy. So that just leaves the Democrats, flawed though they are. Still, I can't help but wish that the choices were better.