The Evolution of My Views
Don't listen to anyone who tells you liberals are the left.
Liberals are not the left; they are the center. When Limbaugh, Hannity et al. thunder against "the left", they are attacking the political center and fundamental values of democracy that both major parties once shared.
The left -- well, that would be a few isolated individuals such as I who believe liberalism is bankrupt, capitalism is ultimately incompatible with democracy, and socialism is the way forward.
I also believe our Constitution is fundamentally flawed and that we need to transition to a parliamentary system like that of Canada, where the head of state is not head of government and obsolete language cannot be used by a corrupt Supreme Court to create an inalienable right to buy political influence or to possess and use deadly weapons.
Perhaps the greatest flaw in the United States Constitution is the failure of its drafters to anticipate the rise of political parties based on ideology. The first success of one such, the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860, led directly to civil war. A fixed-term executive Presidency allows no removal of a government that has become intolerable; in other western democracies, the government falls if it loses a vote of no-confidence in parliament, leading to new elections. The need to secure a majority leads parties of different ideologies to form coalitions and therefore to compromise; the situation does not arise where a minority of voters can elect a President with a blank check to pursue for four years a political program that is generally obnoxious, as has happened in this country twice in as many decades.
I see the election of Donald Trump as a sign that the American political system is broken and that decades of subtle corruption have wrought a degree of dysfunction in our institutions that make change inevitable. We are at a turning point in our history.
This country is not "one nation under God, indivisible"; it is myriad communities, each with its own interests and aspirations, much like the pre-1918 Austro-Hungarian empire. For the country to hold together, each community must acknowledge the legitimate claims of the others and agree to pursue mutually acceptable goals.
For example, the gun problem admits of no one-size-fits-all solution in a country that includes cities and neighborhoods torn by gun violence, on the one hand, and communities where guns are a means of feeding one's family and an essential part of a traditional way of life, on the other. What works in Newport, New Hampshire does not work in Boston, and vice-versa.
Patriotism, the love of one's country, is laudable; but nationalism, the love of one's in-group, is evil. Nationalism destroyed the Habsburg empire, two of its successor states (Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia), and the Soviet Union, and it may well destroy our country too.
Nothing good has ever come from conservatism. The ancien-regime notion that nature or God has decreed a particular order to human society that must never be questioned, and that each of its members, from the king to the merest peasant, has his or her proper place and role, has done nothing but promote suffering, oppression, ignorance, and injustice. And yet it persists despite the best efforts of successive generations of progressives.
Liberals are not the left; they are the center. When Limbaugh, Hannity et al. thunder against "the left", they are attacking the political center and fundamental values of democracy that both major parties once shared.
The left -- well, that would be a few isolated individuals such as I who believe liberalism is bankrupt, capitalism is ultimately incompatible with democracy, and socialism is the way forward.
I also believe our Constitution is fundamentally flawed and that we need to transition to a parliamentary system like that of Canada, where the head of state is not head of government and obsolete language cannot be used by a corrupt Supreme Court to create an inalienable right to buy political influence or to possess and use deadly weapons.
Perhaps the greatest flaw in the United States Constitution is the failure of its drafters to anticipate the rise of political parties based on ideology. The first success of one such, the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860, led directly to civil war. A fixed-term executive Presidency allows no removal of a government that has become intolerable; in other western democracies, the government falls if it loses a vote of no-confidence in parliament, leading to new elections. The need to secure a majority leads parties of different ideologies to form coalitions and therefore to compromise; the situation does not arise where a minority of voters can elect a President with a blank check to pursue for four years a political program that is generally obnoxious, as has happened in this country twice in as many decades.
I see the election of Donald Trump as a sign that the American political system is broken and that decades of subtle corruption have wrought a degree of dysfunction in our institutions that make change inevitable. We are at a turning point in our history.
This country is not "one nation under God, indivisible"; it is myriad communities, each with its own interests and aspirations, much like the pre-1918 Austro-Hungarian empire. For the country to hold together, each community must acknowledge the legitimate claims of the others and agree to pursue mutually acceptable goals.
For example, the gun problem admits of no one-size-fits-all solution in a country that includes cities and neighborhoods torn by gun violence, on the one hand, and communities where guns are a means of feeding one's family and an essential part of a traditional way of life, on the other. What works in Newport, New Hampshire does not work in Boston, and vice-versa.
Patriotism, the love of one's country, is laudable; but nationalism, the love of one's in-group, is evil. Nationalism destroyed the Habsburg empire, two of its successor states (Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia), and the Soviet Union, and it may well destroy our country too.
Nothing good has ever come from conservatism. The ancien-regime notion that nature or God has decreed a particular order to human society that must never be questioned, and that each of its members, from the king to the merest peasant, has his or her proper place and role, has done nothing but promote suffering, oppression, ignorance, and injustice. And yet it persists despite the best efforts of successive generations of progressives.