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Edited on Sun Jul-11-04 07:41 PM by starroute
But when they lost their utopian vision of a better world, liberals were left with no goals except bringing the poor and disenfranchised up to the level of everyone else. That not an unworthy goal -- but it isn't a call to transcendence. It doesn't inspire people with the promise of attaining something beyond their present horizons.
The right has been exploiting that limitation of the left ever since. By painting the Democratic Party as a collection of special interest groups. By demonizing the various movements for civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights. By planting the idea that the poor can be brought up only by shoving the middle class down.
We badly need a new dream and a new vision of the future. If we have that, the Republicans -- the party of things-as-they-are -- won't stand a chance. But the question is where that vision is to come from. The utopian dreams of the past -- based on technology or on social engineering -- won't cut it.
What are your dreams? If you were to imagine a fundamentally better world for yourself and your children, what would it look like? How would people live, support themselves, express their creativity, and exchange the best of what they knew with their fellows? What sort of laws would it have and how would they be enforced?
Don't worry about plausibility or how to get there from here. Dream as big as you can -- the rest will follow of itself.
On edit: Another thought that occurred to me -- when the left shared a dream of the future, that dream united them, from the moderates to the socialists. The only differences involved how to get there and how hard to push things. But when that dream failed, the socialists and radicals no longer had anything in common with the moderates. The far left was cut off from any hope of power or influence, and the moderates sank further and further into the mushy middle.
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