As noted in Monday's Morning Feature, my local Democratic Party committee is working to contact each of the nearly 4000 new Democrats who have registered in our county since the 2008 elections. We'll invite them to vote by mail, for reasons I explained on Monday, and encourage them to vote every race and question on the 2010 ballot. And of course we'll also encourage them to vote for Democrats.
We'll ask them to do all of these things, in part, because this is the 21st century and not the 19th ... or the 14th.
More below the fold....
Why We Bother, Part I - Which Century Is It?
This week, Morning Feature will look at the stark difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Today we'll consider the two parties in terms of what century we live in. Tomorrow we'll ask who "We the People" are. Saturday we'll talk about how we progressives must become more active to transform the Democratic Party, from the ground up.
You might think we shouldn't need this conversation on what founder Markos Moulitsas calls "a Democratic blog, a partisan blog." Yet there is a persistent meme, even here on DailyKos, that there is no real difference between the two parties and it doesn't matter which holds the White House, Congress, or your state and local governments. That meme is at best a narrow view, and often merely a cynical lie.
At best, the "both parties are the same" meme reflects the sense that neither party embodies a given individual's positions on the issues he/she considers most important. In that respect, "both parties are the same" translates to "both parties are not entirely me."
That's probably true for most of us. My vision of a better nation includes greater equality of income and opportunity, a stronger social safety net, less privilege and discrimination, a smaller military presence, and an economy and community patterns focused on sustainability rather than GDP growth. That vision is not yet shared by most Americans, and perhaps even not by most registered Democrats. Because our candidates must win a majority of voters, and not only voters registered in our party, my vision is not yet the mainstream view among elected Democrats.
But that neither party completely embodies my vision is not the same as saying "both parties are the same." The Democratic Party is at least catching up to the 21st century. The Tea Party GOP is firmly mired in the 19th, if not the 14th.
Welcome to the 19th century.
It was a century when empires and colonialism were accepted norms. It was a century when science claimed to prove that males were superior in every way that mattered, that races were different species of humans, and that the children of society's elite inherited superior intellectual and moral qualities. It was a century of vast frontiers and undeveloped resources, coupled with smaller and more insular communities. It was a century when workers were virtual or literal chattel. It was a century when the law was more often enforced by private gangs than by police forces. It was a century when civilians might dress in their finest and climb a hill to watch a battle as if it were a sporting event.
It was, very nearly, a Tea Party GOP utopia.
It's hard for many of us to imagine the prevailing worldview of the 19th century. To read newspapers, magazines, and journals from that era is to step into a world where much that we take for granted had not yet been imagined. As we noted last week, the Standard Oil monopoly grew in large part because the idea of federal product safety regulations did not yet exist. Nor did the idea of labor laws, except those that enabled slavery and company towns, and authorized government or private militias to force workers back into fields, factories, or mines. It was a world that, in many ways, resembled the nightmarish scenario that addisnana described in yesterday's Morning Feature.
In the 19th century, international law could be summarized as "might makes right." In Europe the Great Powers jockeyed or fought for dominance in "the great game," carving up not only Europe but the entire world. The U.S. was a player throughout that century, from the invasion of Canada that set off the War of 1812, declaring the entire hemisphere our own fiefdom via the Monroe Doctrine, the land grab that was the Mexican-American War, the slaughter and confinement of Native Americans in the "Indian" Wars, and finally to the overseas colonialism of the Spanish-American War. While a few statesmen of the times criticized each of these conflicts, the prevailing view would have made today's neoconservatives proud. The U.S. was doing what Great Powers or those who wished to be Great Powers did: kill or buy off whomever we had to to get whatever we wanted.
It was our "manifest destiny," after all. God Himself intended it. And speaking of God....
Welcome to the 14th century.
It was a century when all political power in Europe was sanctioned by the church, when the Bible was the only supreme law that could constrain the feudal lord, and any who dared rebel against church or state could be tortured and executed in the most hideous ways imaginable. It was a time when "civilization" and "Christendom" were considered synonyms and the mortal peril lay in Islam. It was a time when science had not yet risen, and religion was the font of all knowledge. When the Black Plague swept through Europe, it was seen as God's judgment and an excuse to murder those who were different: Jews, women believed to be witches, and other "heretics."
Pat Robertson, or the Tradition, Marriage, Property crusaders, would have felt right at home.
Which century is it?
These are the visions of the Tea Party GOP and the Religious Right. They want to live in the 19th century, or even the 14th, albeit with 21st century luxuries for themselves ... and 21st century surveillance for the rest of us.
No, elected Democrats are not yet the embodiment of my own vision for a 21st century America. But they're a whole lot closer to it, and I don't want to go back the the 19th century, or the 14th.
That's why we bother.
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Good morning! ::hugggggs::