Kos Community,
I took a hiatus from posting here for personal reasons. But it's time for people across the country to make their voices heard in different way - a proven way. Our activism must now be characterized by a willingness to call the other side on their hypocrisy, to fight the ugliness of ignorance and injustice head on. I'm talking about organized resistance on a large scale - marches, sit-ins, boycotts.
The problem is that we often frame the culture war in terms of our values vs. their values. However, we refrain from talking about ignorance, evil, hypocrisy, selfishness and the like because our notions of a "big tent" have made this kind of talk unfashionable and not politically correct. We tend to stand on the virtue of our ideas without challenging the ugly under-belly of the Right. To us, equality for all just makes sense -- we don't need to attack the other side to expose it. However, this is the only language many people in this country understand.
The brilliance of the civil rights movement was that it mastered this language with a positive vision. On a daily basis, it made people confront the ills of their racism, while talking about ignorance and challenging this country to accept positive change. We lose the culture war when we are unwilling to make people confront their own ignorance. We lose when we are not willing to say, "How can you be pro-life and support the death of 100K innocent Iraqis? Where are you moral values at?"
We can't just argue our values versus their values. We must confront people with their hypocrisy, and we must do in a positive way that they can't ignore. The civil rights movement successfully challenged the notion of being a "good Christian" and a racist. We must challenge the conservatives who talk of moral values while doing immoral things.
The Kos community should start an organized resistance movement. Progressives should peacefully march on Washington and organize some of the biggest protests this country has seen. Only then can we start to win the values discussion.
We also need to take this movement to the South and Bible Belt. We can't just protest in NY, Seattle and DC, effectively preaching to the choir. Let's bring to their faces. Let's do it in their backyards.
Recommend this diary. Let's start organizing.