Posted on 10/20/2011 2:57:39 PM PDT by mojito
Liberalism’s core values remain strong, persuasive and enduring. Their fighting vitality is apparent in the spreading youth-led protests on Wall Street and across the country. What we lack is a coherent progressive narrative explaining and justifying liberalism’s role in the radically changed circumstances of the twenty-first century—a liberal vision of the kind Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams offered the founders or John Dewey gave the Progressive Era. Liberals need to stop denying who they are and, like the young protesters, start fighting for what they believe in. For though aggravated and anxious, liberals have never been less visible in the struggle for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens.
With no coherent new liberal narrative to render our values timely, we too often cleave to the center and compromise to the right. We care about civility, but civility is looking a lot like surrender. We must not step away from our values before negotiation begins, allowing runaway financial markets, bloviating plutocrats and anti-government hubris to dominate, while poverty, social justice and climate change slip off the legislative agenda. And when we do take to the streets to voice our anger, we lack the clarity and focus that only a relevant narrative can offer.
The stakes have never been higher: nearly three years after the inauguration of a moderate African-American president, our nation confronts a rapacious plutocracy reminiscent of the Gilded Age and a noisome corporate media along with a noisy, supposedly anti-plutocratic populist Tea Party that is in fact funded by that very plutocracy. This weird coalition of the smug and the frightened cries, “We’re number one!” even as it dismantles the democratic institutions and programs that make America great and plays roulette with the debt ceiling and America’s global reputation.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
"With no coherent new liberal narrative to render our values timely..." You don't say, Sparky? Could have fooled me!
If you can stomach it, read the whole silly mess. Few articles reveal so much about the liberal mind, or rather the lack thereof.
Liberalism, as with Progressivism, is a mental disorder. =.=
LOL! That is quite enough. I don’t need to see any more of it. It’s all about the narrative to them. The fact that nothing in history supports their backward beliefs never even enters into their minds.
In exactly the same way that "decay" is enduring. In exactly the same way that rust never sleeps. In exactly the same way that the second law of thermodynamics demands that the entropy of any closed system must always increase.
Just as Kipling taught us in The Gods of the Copybook Headings, the dog must return to its vomit. In exactly this way, Liberalism's core values are strong, persuasive, and enduring.
Maybe the message is "We are clueless and we need adult supervision".
I laughed after the first sentence. That’s a knee slapper.
One grain of truth in the piece: the smelly OWS brats are indeed representative of liberal “values”: drugs, sex, body mutilations, anger, socialism, communism and body odor.
Liberalism’s core values are strong, pervasive, and
hard to remove from the body politic, rather like
the scent of skunk.
“Liberalism’s core values remain strong, persuasive and enduring.”
(The Catholic church calls them ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’)
“Their fighting vitality is apparent in the spreading youth-led protests on Wall Street and across the country.”
(Though organized, directed, paid for and supported by corrupt old ultra wealthy white men who see it as a means to keep and extend their wealth and power.)
“What we lack is a coherent progressive narrative explaining and justifying liberalism’s role in the radically changed circumstances of the twenty-first century...”
(Now that the Soviet Union collapsed, taking most institutional Marxism with it, and China is more interested in money than dialectic.)
“Liberals need to stop denying who they are...”
(Which is hard when you can’t look in a mirror without wanting to vomit, and even your therapists don’t want to physically touch you.)
persuasive
and enduring.
If we can't beat them, even with the massive fraud they use to stuff ballot boxes, then we don't deserve to win. Even if Romney is our nominee, we need to get every conservative to the polls for the Senate and House races and for state and local elections. These drug-addled losers must be stopped; it's time for the adults to make the decisions.
"We the people" are the government. America is a government that has a country, not the other way around. To oppose government is therefore anti-people and anti-American.
Very persuasive. I'm convinced.
That third photo...tell me it is photoshopped, please. That way I’ll know whether to laugh or cry.
The author is certifiable.
Were things like this ever taken seriously? If so, when did things change?
When did we as a country stop falling for stuff like this? Or at what age do individuals realize it's nonsense?
Or maybe there's always an audience of manifesto readers and believers that completely overlaps with the supply of manifesto writers.
Symbolism over substance is the core of liberalism.
Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams have nothing in common with the modern progressive left’s communist and socialists. The problem is they are totalitarians not liberals.
Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams have nothing in common with the modern progressive left’s communists and socialists. The problem is they are totalitarians not liberals.
Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams have nothing in common with the modern progressive left’s communists and socialists. The problem is they are totalitarians not liberals.
Barber’s an idiot.
“THE ISSUE IS NOT THE ISSUE. THE ISSUE IS REVOLUTION!”-SDS activist
I don't actually know, but it's so classically liberal that I couldn't resist. [I found it on Google images by searching for OWS photos, but i suspect it was taken elsewhere and reused.]
Well, he was a certified advisor to the Clinton White House.
IMO, it doesn't get lower than that.
Moderate. LOLOL
Well done, funniest thing I’ve read on the subject
Only two of those “values” really bother me, and that is the socialism/communism.
If it were not for the socialism/communism inherent in the wealth redistribution that allows these people to exist, the consequences of promiscuity, excess drug useage, laziness and even BO would be self correcting due to real consequences!
The Progressive “message” is always obscured, most often by verbal legerdemain, because it would otherwise be required to speak its name and reveal its true purpose, namely: Inability, and the purposeful justification of theft.
Good point. These people are not independently wealthy, but the money of others (their families, SEIU, welfare, unemployment insurance, donations, etc.) allows them the luxury of this public temper tantrum for however long it lasts. Without it they would have to work at a job, any job, or starve.
...nearly three years after the inauguration of a moderate African-American president, our nation confronts a rapacious plutocracy reminiscent of the Gilded Age and a noisome corporate media along with a noisy, supposedly anti-plutocratic populist Tea Party that is in fact funded by that very plutocracy.What a miserable lying c- s-er.
Not photoshopped, it was a picture taken from a TV screen.
Check http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/mlkday.asp
“Their fighting vitality is apparent in the spreading youth-led protests on Wall Street and across the country. “
So, the mouldy, anti-Semitic hippy wannabes of OWS, they’re “youths”? They’re also “liberals”? You heard it straight from the horse. Never let them live it down.
He did say something about being incoherent, though. Maybe that’s the core value.
What bs. This guy must live in a basement; he only writes about the world that he imagines. The real world has completely escaped his consciousness.
The social contract must safeguard certain inalienable rights, among them the right to subsidies, subsidies for “art,” subsidies for abortion, taking liberties on public streets, suppressing liberty on the public airwaves, and the pursuit of flash-mob victims.
Thanks for the link...astonishing. If they would only mix up their Ds and Rs when voting.
I actually managed to suppress my gag reflex enough to read most of Page 1 of 2 before I gave up, but my take-away was exactly that! "We are clueless and we need adult supervision".
Only on a butterfly-shapped ballot with chads hanging out in the dimples.
You got that right. It's almost impossible to read this entire screed without dozing off, but I skipped down to the last paragraphs which reveal this totalitarian's mind. He writes "private ownership corrupts democracy" in one of his final statements. He wants the internet to be run by a central government. He could have spared the poor fools who read the entire ridiculous leftist jumble, and just wrote that. This guy really needs a good editor.
The great majority of people who write these sorts of things tend to be liberal. They fervently believe if they can just get their great ideas down on paper, the world will read them and recognize what a genius is the writer. Then supposedly money, chicks, power will ensue, and the writer will rightfully be recognized as a true hero of the people. Or at least the leftist side of spectrum.
But I would bet that if the name Benjamin Barber comes up on any good leftist's reading list in the future, they'll quickly skip it and get back to the bong. They won't read someone who's even more boring than Chomsky.
I think the only take away is
“while taxes are seen as bad by most everyone and we shouldn’t be for something everyone hates, they are in fact really good and we should fight for them. Oh and that liberty thingy, what ever that is, we should for that too, cause then we’re good guys”.
I’m glad that I didn’t eat my Stove Top Stuffing before reading this leftist wimp’s BS.
Come on Progressives. Let’s get this revolution on.
We’re loaded with guns and ammo. You’re loaded with marxist bullshit. Who do you think is going to win?
We’re the Libyan people. You’re Qaddafi, and you know how that worked out.
See you in the streets, progressives. I love a target rich environment.
We better keep buying ammo & guns. I just received the following from a friend:
“For the last several years a company called The Freedom Group has been buying up gun and ammunition manufacturers.Some of the companies are Bushmaster,Marlin,Remington,DPMS, Dakota Arms and H&R.
“Some people worry that this Freedom Group is going to control most of the firearms companies in the United States. If you control the manufacturers you can decide to stop selling to civilians.What a perfect way to control guns.
“Now if you do some digging you will see that The Freedom Group is owned by a company called Cerberus Capital Management. Guess who controls Cerberus??? GEORGE SOROS !!!!!!!!! One of the most evil men on this planet who wants to restrict or ban all civilian guns.
“Please pass this on to all your freedom loving friends. This needs to come out.Why have we not heard about this in the “mainstream” media? I would think this would be BIG news.”
I did a search & found a WSJ article from 2009, so apparently it’s true:
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/10/19/a-dossier-on-cerberuss-freedom-group/
What’s the connection between Soros and Cerberus?
I know Dan Quayle is a major domo at Cerberus.
I went looking & couldn’t find a specific link. I guess it’s just one of those internet rumors.
Pardon my post! :-)
No sweat.
Soros is an evil man but he’s not omnipotent.
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