Two things happened today that dovetail in my mind:
1. Bloggers on this site as well as others are suggesting, often angrily, that "the best thing that could happen" to Democrats would be the repeal of Roe v. Wade. The idea is that if things get REALLY bad, the red states will wake up and Dems will start winning. At the suggestion that this is the rhetoric of "acceptable losses" in war (and that the losses are always borne by someone else -- a la the 101st Fighting Keyboardists), and is therefore beneath us, some become more angry and suggest that winning at all costs is what matters (in one particular case, when I pushed for a specific value of how many poor, red-state women's lives are worth a Senate seat, the response was -- and I kid you not -- "as many as it takes")
2. Star Trek's Scotty -- actor James Doohan -- passed away.
Fans of Trek have already mourned the passing of Mark Lenard (Sarek) and DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), and as we do, some of us see the progressive, forward-thinking idealism that propelled us into the 70's fading as well. The "winning at all costs" argument is not just a good example of what concerns me/us -- it is THE example.
In so much art/culture/commentary leading out of the 60s and into the often subtely progressive punk movement, progressivism was about values. Ideals. The end never justified the means. We had a firm moral compass, and we would win elections -- not all the time, but a lot. Star Trek - with all its clunkiness, crudeness, quaintness and moments of hackery, exemplified that when it worked. In fact, watching reruns in the 70's, it had a huge effect on my own moral development (if nothing else, by seeing that good guys always stun, while only bad guys kill).
In the 80's came the backlash - not just against our victories but our values. The culture was Rambo, not Star Trek. Even Star Trek wasn't Star Trek anymore, it's dialectic of human savagery and potential focused towards an ever-improving, communitarian future giving way to a bland, new age fluff.
Fast forward to 2005. It's been a rough decade so far, and we were beat up pretty bad in the 90's, but is this (the above argument in praise of Roe's extinction) what it has come to? Is this "culture war" just a board game and to the winners go the spoils? Are we no longer fighting for lives, but just Senate seats? Does the end now justify the means? In the Star Trek films, the "old crew" reminded us of our moral center. The oft repeated "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" maxim was, in the end, "illogically" trumped by its reciprocal -- "the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many." The message of altruism. Of "no one is expendable," -- "no one gets left behind."
So I put the question out there: is the idealism being drained from liberalism? Are there no lines we shouldn't cross to win (and if not, is there any recognizable liberalism left)?
The purest example of the old Star Trek ethic that I remember came not from Star Trek, but from another Gene Roddenberry pilot from a few years later. In the god awful "Genesis 2," there was a moment of disturbing wisdom. The hero, awakened from hibernation in a post-apocalyptic future, helps those of goodwill who survive prevent the bad guys from attaining an ancient nuclear weapon. To defeat the villians, our hero destroys the bad guys' HQ. Meeting back up with the good guys, he is asked with concern if anyone was hurt in the explosion. Our hero reponds that there were likely a couple guards that were killed, but it was a necessary sacrifice when balanced against the lives that were saved.
The future good guys respond grimly (to the best of my memory): "It was that kind of logic that destroyed your world."There was no further explanation. If you needed it explained to you, you couldn't understand. My 8 year old brain sure didn't.
But nobody needs to explain it to me anymore.