Is anyone else being driven further to the left?

Not just by the Repukes, but by our own Democratic "leaders" who seem equally willing to sell us out when the price is right. To give you an idea, I'm likely attending a Socialist Worker's Party meeting tonight. About six years ago, I'd have considered myself a moderate Republican. That's how bad the situation seems to me.

I'm becoming aggressively leftist!!! :grr:

eom

They aren't making me crazy, but Bush and the theocons and neocons and their corporate sponsors have turned me from a moderate to a bug-eyed, spittle-flying tin foil hat wearing maniac.

servative/moderate leaning Democrat! I don't think that I've changed that much, but now am considered on the lunatic fringe because I seem to value truth, justice and freedom. What's up with that?

who are more interested in their personal agenda FOR OTHERS rather than promoting civil rights and autonomy.

It's just that America is a conservative country now being pulled into all-out fascism.


NEVER mistake that which US corporate media calls "the center" for a reasonable, centrist position. Joe Lieberman or Lincoln Chafee would be considered EXTREME right-wingers in any other advanced country. People like Feingold and Kucinich would be run-of-the-mill moderates.

self if you let them. Do not change who you are because of what they do.

There was nothing wrong with you before.

Do not encourage others to become more radical.

We will only beat the freaks in the WH by being adults. That means putting away childish ideologies like socialism because we are going to be much poorer and we cannot afford the social programs we have now. Especially when 1/3 the people in America are retired.

We democrats have a big tent and we need to keep it.

We ought to be leading the world in making our society better for all. Instead we spend our children's futures on having our military in countries all around the world so our corporations can acquire even more wealth.
Socialism is about finding ways to take care of the people in the best way available.

your bills you are liberal. We have a socialist party in Canada and whenever they get elected ... they govern like liberals. Because it is irresponsible to not pay attention to markets and economics (not including any supply side crap). Not only do the socialist govern like liberals when they get into power, but their rank and file vote for conservatives and liberals but not in majority for the socialists.

So when I say to put away childish things I mean to put away the dream that we will ever be as rich as we were in the 1950s to the 1990s. Those days are over. We will never see growth like that. It was based on not having to compete with 1) Europe or japan after the war 2)any soviet block country 3) the less developed nations. Now we have to compete with them. So there is less monopoly action for us in terms of having everything go our way. So we will be poorer and can afford even fewer social programs.

A liberal would say "okay but the basic programs, improved for effectiveness and as a whole made more efficient, we need those and will build it and environmental and peace into our corporate & democratic and multilateral processes".


Anyone who says that you can stay out of the market and not hit the dark ages in America is a lier. Anyone who says that our standard of living can be higher or equal to the 20th century is lying. And we could not afford the programs we had. Now we balance the books. And we recognize that communism never worked anywhere because by not allowing any wealth... nothing worked. Markets do create wealth. How that wealth is distributed is another story.

I used to consider myself a moderate...my principles didn't change, it's just that what was once "left-leaning middle of the road" suddenly shifted under my feet. The further right the right went, the further left I went.

Hell, by the time this is done, I'll be a Socialist, myself.

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...as well as classic left writings by Karl Marx and others mainly to review what the neo-cons and the right-wing fundamentalists find so threatening about the ideas of the left. These people are scared shit-less by socialistic ideas, so much so that they are willing to commit crimes of unbelievable violence against anyone who even suggests considering political and social concepts different from theirs. That's powerful!

I haven't even looked at a lot of this stuff since the 1960's. But I'm dusting it all off and looking again with a new pair of glasses on the catch what I may have missed to first time through it.:woohoo:

Many of his economic predictions are coming true with our own situation: shrinking market, depressed earnings, competitive labor, etc.

<snip>
Karl Marx
1848


On January 9 1848, Marx spoke before the Democratic Association of Brussels about the topical question of free trade

.

At the end of 1847, Brussels had hosted a "Free Trade Congress," which was designed to further the general Free Trade campaign English manufacturers were waging. In 1846, the English bourgeoisie repealed England's Corn Laws and were ready to take their cause abroad.


Marx asked for a slot to speak, but the Congress closed before his name could come up on the lists. So instead he delivered his speech to the Democratic Association -- of which he was among the vice-presidents.


When the Free Trade question raged again in the late 1880s, Marx's speech was reissued in English, with a lengthy introduction by Engels. "Free Trade vs. Protectionism" is a question that remains periodically relevant as long as capitalism exists. Indeed, when the recent US-Canada-Mexico Free Trade negotiations took place in the early 1990s, even the New York Times felt compelled to quote Marx's speech.


Marx's speech was transcribed in French in February 1848 and published in Brussels. Later that year, it was translated into German and published in Germany.

<more>
<link> http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/marx_freetrade.html


Since this piece was given 157 years ago, I guess the neo-cons and the federalists figured most people would not have studied this or remembered these ideas of how free trade was used to exploit the working class.

The Socialist Workers Party underwent a huge transformation after the 70's. It's a tiny political sect now that doesn't participate in and support anti-war organizations and other movements.

Vist their website and you'll see what I mean. You might want to check out other socialist organizations that seem to have their head screwed on right before joining the Socialist Workers Party. Check them all out before you decide to join any of them.

I'm not a member of any socialist organization so I can't recommend any to join.

I don't think that I have gone that far to the left but I have definately moved much further to the left then I used to be. This country is becoming a very scary place, when you have politicans meeting with religous leaders to discuss judges. It is just sickening.

Party. Like now.

It has become very clear that most of them are dangerous traitors and corporate whores planted in the Democratic Party, and they are not only helping the republicans destroy America, but they have already all but destroyed the Democratic Party.

"Democrats moving to the middle is a double disaster that alienates the party's progressive base while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side is where the good ideas are.' It unconsciously locks in the notion that the other side's positions are worth moving toward, while your side's positions are the ones to move away from. Plus every time you move to the center, the right just moves further to the right."- George Lakoff

Get use to it. The corporate interests aren't going to leave! It's there party. They finance it, they bought it.

If you have a few billion to spread around they might open the door for you and listen to your proposals .... if they can profit from them.

Who ever thought that free-speech, fair elections, an independent judiciary and equal rights were considered part of "The Michael Moore Wing of The Democratic Party."

If John Kerry is considered "liberal" than I must really be way, WAY out there.

Although I don't really have any more radical ideals than I had in the sixties, I'm considered a slobbering, wild-eyed extremist today.
It's the goalposts that have moved, not the people, IMHO.

i'm with you.....but i wake up every day amazed at how fast (how far) the goal posts have moved!

a couple nights ago. he is coming to dinner tonight. gonna tell him, the right has gone so far to extreme to be in the middle is now labeled left extremist. how does that work

by 1933 many people who would have voted Repukes became life time democrats

I'm really just an FDR style democrat but lord god the wimps we got on our side have me ready to start singing the Internationale loudly at street corners and read snatches of Das Capital on Subways.

The quote that keeps coming to mind is one from Hunter Thompson "These swine should be beaten, whipped and driven from the land" -

So yeah I'd say I was getting more radical.

We need to go WAY left.

I hold the same sensible liberal principles I always have. The Boosh junta has moved so far right that they're damn near fascist, now, so I supposed I may look extreme in comparison, but I haven't changed any. I'm not a radical - they neocons are the radicals. I don't think radicalism either way solves anything. Some people may think they need to turn into Marxist revolutionaries to combat the neocon's extreme agenda, out of some odd idea of "balance," but what America needs is a return to the FDR and JFK liberalism of the mid twentieth century, not a push into the ill-fated adventures in radical far leftism.

I have changed very little.
The Republicans have gone on some wierd direction, they are no longer conservatives... they have become blatant in thier love of the wealthy, and they kowtow to the Psuedo-Christian 'Fundamentalist' movement, and screw the working class...

The Republicans have shown me through thier actions and words that they cannot be trusted with power. I will vote for whoever I feel will get them out of power, which happens to be the Democratic Party right now.

:hi:

on edit: screwed up my smilie, wiser my ass!

I have seen too much of Democrats participating in human rights criminal violations, supporting polluters, ignoring corporate crime, and sucking at the teats of the very groups the Republicans get their power from.
The difference between the two parties is a small distance.
I vote for Democrats as the lesser of two evils. We need major changes in this country to get the poor and the workers motivated enough to vote regularly.

I am exactly in the same place as always--a Democrat.


Unfortunately, it seems the party went to the right and now I am considered far to the left, when I have not moved at all.

I'm just pissed that they're selling us out. I was very disappointed with Mr. Reid selling that bankruptcy bill and saying he was proud to work with the republicans on it. :mad: I'm so far left though if you barely touch me I'll fall off the clift. ;)

However my view of reality is quite different?

Knowledge is power!

I was a republican, moderate, but totally against war. The Reagan days moved me to register democrat. I just could never swallow that trickle down garbage, even though I was on my way to the top of the food chain. Eventually the Reagan years pushed me further to the left, right in to green.

I've been a way left leaning liberal since 2000, I'm calling it progressive, and d*mn, real proud of it, and I'm really, really scared of my country. :scared: I edit, to say FOR my country, but with all these RW'ers I should keep it scared OF my country

So it just seems that I've moved to the left.

I borrowed Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States the same week those Vichy Democrats gave Bushco license to wage perpetual war in the Middle East. While some DUers were (quite pathetically) trying to justify the actions of Kerry, Lieberman, Clinton (et al), I was scouring the chapters chronicling our entry into the various wars throughout the 20th century.

Alas, I discovered that the Democrat=peaceloving/Republican=warmongering construct was incorrect: it was not the rightists who led the charge for those imperalist ventures; it was not the conservatives who sent our children to kill and to die in Europe, Korea and Vietnam...it was Wilson, Truman and Johnson, all of whom were interested in more pernicious things than democracy and freedom.

It was just a hop to Vidal, a skip to Parenti, and a jump to Chomsky, before I became an independent.

But, the Dem "leaders" have certainly fortified my views about politicians in general.

Ironically, I'm a former member of the SWP. How much does the Militant sell for these days?

political spectrum altogether!

I am appalled at the way our country is being run into the ground by right-wing radicals, at the "me-first" attitude of so many people, at the fawning, enabling media, and at the God-awful public piousness that is being fobbed off as "faith."

I've been speaking up, and I have been pushing Democratic leaders to speak up. I've been donating my time and money to progressive PACs and causes.

I'll do all I can to get these truly horrible people away from the reins of power, and to keep them away. Frankly, and I hate to say this, but right now, things do not look good; there is not much to take encouragement from.

But it will be a long battle, and I am more than prepared to do my part to get things back on track, which realistically will take *decades*.

My convictions have deepened as well, as I have seen the destructiveness of republican rule.

We will be there to clean up the mess the robber barons leave behind. I am more dedicated than ever to prevent them from ever doing it again.

I'm becoming less and less pacifistic in my views of the looming cultural war.

Just varieties.

Like the often told tales of so many others, the 2000 selection and the subsequent national nightmare shook me out of a state of political apathy and into a state of astute polical awareness. My political identity had been formed early in life and I've never wavered from my core beliefs in the necessity of managed capitalism, liberal social programs, and libertarian social views. Raised in a Roman Catholic (though my views are Agnostic and I only go through the motions now in respect for my still left leaning family), staunchly Democratic working class family engendered values in me that are as tenacious as the Earth is solid. No, my political beliefs haven't changed, except for the fact that I vote Green over Dem in local elections and that in my middle age I've become a part-time activist -volunteered for America Coming Together -and I will continue to fight the good fight. The truth is that the culture has changed, and as a result of America's shift toward the precipice of doom, I only seem to be farther left than ever before.

Just turn LEFT. That's it, and a little more LEFT should do.

or a libertarian. Before Bush, I was mushy, not really for either party, a centrist who thought of himself as a Clinton-crat.

Bush has changed that. I am a proud liberal now who doesn't plan to shut up any time soon.

rare cases like Sweden where the country is very small homogeneous and share like cultural values of patriotism and caring. I still believe the capitalist structure is most effective. But am I moving left? Hell yea! I believe capitalism gradually self destructs if there is not a constant (and systemic) redistribution of wealth downward because in a completely uncontrolled untaxed capitalist economy the wealth naturally flows up until there are asset bubbles everywhere--lots of cash chasing few opportunities and no demand because every one has gone to the eyeballs in debt except for the small segment that is wealthy--and they are physically incapable of buying enough to keep the economy humming.

My idea is to let capitalism function but tax it where the true costs stem from and pay those who suffer with those taxes. I think that is the best that can be hoped for.

Democratic majority in Congress (with some shining exceptions) enabled everything Reagan did in the name of "bipartisanship."

though I wouldn't necessarily characterize that as more to the left. My ideas are becoming more independent and eclectic, but definitely more radical. I'm also more open-minded; I used to be much more dogmatic, without even realizing it.

Republican-->Libertarian-->Georgist

For those of you who have faith in the free market (as it does not exist currently) and wish for neither big government or rule by big corporations, I really suggest reading Progress & Poverty by Henry George, written in 1878.

Online copy here:
http://www.henrygeorge.org/pplink.htm