The comments to my recent post, Liberal V. Conservative, brought up something that I think a lot about: our roles in these political debates. Are we arguing our side? Or arguing for the truth?

As I said in that post, I believe deeply in “liberal” ideals. I think they are correct. But I still have my own balance of views, some more conservative and some quite liberal. But, in general, my view almost always coincides with the prevailing liberal view.

But, as I wrote about in The Things On Which We Agree, I am very interested, when it comes to policy, to try to look for middle ground. Where do we agree, Right and Left, such that we can move forward with policy?

So I kind of play two roles in my mind. I play the Defender of the Left in the political debate and The Solution Seeker when it comes to policy. The former is the abstract debate about what is right and wrong on the issues and the latter is looking for common ground to get things done when it comes to the matters at hand, right now.

Most of the time, on this blog, I am arguing, debating and trying to persuade. But I am interested (and do address, I think) the areas where we can compromise, find middle ground or find common cause.

I also thinks these two roles are consistent with each other. It’s OK that we kick and scratch and claw in the debate. It is blood sport and that kind of spirited sparring can bring out the issues and challenge ideas. But when the time comes to govern, we have to try to get along.

As I’ve said, Bush sucks at this. He’s been a bastard to the Left. Politics permeates all policy with this White House. It’s embarrassing. The only thing these guys are competent at is grabbing power. They can’t govern.

Compromise, though, cannot mean watered down crap where we hurt them a little and they hurt us a little. We need to make good decisions. That’s hard and we need all viewpoints at the table.

So, to conclude, the Defender of the Left wants to smack you around a bit until you see how wrong you are thinking. People do learn things and people do change their minds. I learn things and I change my mind. I reject failed hypotheses. We can’t be afraid to get our cages rattled. You have to know why you think what you think. You have to show me where my thinking is wrong.

But The Solution Seeker should probably come out more in all of us. In the end, we need to all row at least slightly in the same direction or we go in circles.

Why do I argue? Why do I try to convince?

Two reasons.

Reason One: I want to push the average American’s philosophy to the Left. I want to do this because I think some very liberal people vote Right because they don’t like liberals or what liberals stand for, divorced from the fact that the majority of their positions are more Left than Right. The Right has so successfully demonized the word “liberal” that cowards like John Kerry are too afraid to admit to it.

Reason Two: I think the philosophy of the Left is one of more potential for maintaining and improving our overall quality of life. I believe in the principles of the Left, I’m convinced by the huge benefit Liberalism has provided us in history and I’m emboldened by the huge potential for Liberalism to improve our future.

So I want to make people reexamine what the Left really stands for, because it is often incorrectly characterized by the Right.

So what is it? In a nutshell, in a phrase I’ve used repeatedly, I think the Liberal idea is expressed perfectly by Paul Wellstone in one sentence:

We all do better when we all do better.

We all do better when we all do better! The base conservative ideals of survival of the fittest, private ownership of everything, weak government, etc. are ideals of “haves” and “have nots”. They are ideals which great permanent divides. Walls.

The base liberal idea is that our own success is tightly coupled to the success of those around us. That we best insure our own survival by working effectively with those around us. Walls with doors.

Now I must emphasize that I am a capitalist and I think that ownership and markets are very important. But there is a role for socialist forces. Socialist, in this context, literally means “of the society”. It does not imply a state-owned world. It means that there is a role for forces which embody our shared will and protect our shared best interests.

I think the America was founded on the Liberal ideas I’m talking about here. Citizenship is not a one way street. You take and you give. This country was founded by intellectual liberals who were not happy with the status quo. They found an intelligent mix of personal and social responsibility.

The bottom line is that the philosophy of the Right is, when you strip everything away, the “haves” protecting their assets from the “have nots”. The philosophy of the Left is that we’re more likely to be “haves” if we work also for the success of the people around us and not focus solely on our own best interest.

In game theory, as depicted in A Beautiful Mind, this philosophy was proven mathematically! The Liberal philosophy is a mathematical fact. That’s why I argue.

I agree with ending the open-ended money and blood pit that is the so-called Iraq “war”. The free ride is over for Bush. Give us a plan or expect us to give you one. The notion that we can spend and die over there until “democracy” shows up is daft. We need more international involvement and less focus on this retarded notion that we are fighting an existential conflict over there. That is bullshit. There is no clear and present danger that the US will be wiped out of existence by terrorists. That’s a Republicans Biblical fantasy.

But, damn it, Dems, what the fuck are you doing putting pork in this fucking bill? As if it isn’t controversial enough to put a timetable on this thing. What brain dead retards thought it was a good time to load up on some pork. That is lame.

Diebold is suing the state of Massachusetts because it didn’t win a contract for voting machines.

“We want a judge to either order the contract awarded to Diebold, based on his review of the proposals, but if he does not want to go that far, to at least order a reopening of the competition”

As if we needed another reason to think these guys were evil, incompetent twits. Hello, free market?

This case should not only be thrown out of court, but Diebold should be liable for all costs by the taxpayers to defend themselves against this frivolous suit.

Further, we should pass a federal law that says all voting machines must be open source, period.

David C. Iglesias wrote an article for the New York Times explaining his view of his firing.

Now we all know that the President can fire US attorneys for no reason. They serve “at the pleasure” of the President and none of us would be asking questions if they fired people for poor performance or just fired everybody in a house cleaning. I heard that Clinton did the latter at one point.

The question is: are we comfortable with the President firing people because they did not serve his political interests? Do we want US attorneys to apply their work with a bias towards the party in the White House?

From the article:

…I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges — the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about — before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, “I am very sorry to hear that,” and the line went dead.

A few weeks after those phone calls, my name was added to a list of United States attorneys who would be asked to resign — even though I had excellent office evaluations, the biggest political corruption prosecutions in New Mexico history, a record number of overall prosecutions and a 95 percent conviction rate. (In one of the documents released this week, I was deemed a “diverse up and comer” in 2004. Two years later I was asked to resign with no reasons given.)

When some of my fired colleagues…and I testified before Congress on March 6, a disturbing pattern began to emerge. Not only had we not been insulated from politics, we had apparently been singled out for political reasons. (Among the Justice Department’s released documents is one describing the office of Senator Domenici as being “happy as a clam” that I was fired.)

Domenici is, apparently, a scumbag who was pissed off that the US attorney did not help them win elections.

Does that piss you off? It pisses me off. It also pisses off my lawyer friend, Mark, who had this to say:

The most disturbing
reason given for termination was a refusal to investigate and/or indict the administration’s political rivals prior to the last congressional election. The investigations and/or indictments at issue were not pursued because the US attorneys who were assigned to the cases did not believe there were grounds to proceed based on their review of the law and evidence. There were attempts made to pressure at least one of these US Attorneys into bringing what amounted to a groundless indictment, purely for political gain. Such action amounts to an abuse of police power and an attempt to mount a malicious prosecution. This action is unethical and dangerous to our representative form of government. US Attorneys, as prosecutors, are
supposed to operate independently of political influence. Their job is to determine whether a particular case warrants prosecution based on the laws of the United States and the evidence available. When the results of the “prosecutorial decision making process” are influenced or dictated by the political party in power, it results in a “police state”.

The Republicans, of course, are trying to claim this is all political theater even though the President himself admits “mistakes were made”. If you think concern for the justice system is “political theater”, you are a fucktard.

Even if you disagree with Clinton, you have to admit that the guy is extremely intelligent, highly knowledgeable, ridiculously experienced and able to engage in discussions in a way that completely evades Bush.

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Am I the only one slightly bothered by all these yellow ribbons stuck on cars that say “Support Our Troops”? I don’t know a single person in this country who doesn’t support our troops. These are our sons, daughters, cousins, uncles, etc. and of course we support them. So in one sense it is like getting a bumper sticker that says “I Breathe Air”. Yes, I know you do, so do I.

But I do understand that for some people a gesture of support to their loved ones overseas is important. They want us to remember that there are people over there, far from their families, in harm’s way. That doesn’t bother me at all and I understand completely.

What bothers me is that we put these people in harm’s way because we were lied to. We were told that Iraq represented a clear and present danger to the United States. That was not true. Now we are told that Saddam was a bad man and that we have a mission to spread “liberty”. This is another lie. There are lots of bad men in power and we have historically befriended them if we thought it was in our interest. Hence the famous photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. This is not a war about bad men, it’s a war about controlling the world’s oil supply. We have our sons, daughters, cousins, uncles, etc. dying far from home so we can have cheap gas for our SUVs. That is immoral.

The disconnect here is that the United States military is being used as an economic tactic. We are killing others and getting our relatives killed to serve the interests of the oil industry, the auto industry and the military-industrial complex. That is not something that should be commemorated with little yellow ribbons. It is a deep betrayal of the American people by a bunch of ultra-rich neocons. The fact that 50% of the people of this country are too stupid to realize this is a major disappointment to the moral and fair-minded people of the world who are completely appalled by these lies and tactics.

So as you drive around in a car with 100 times more power than you need, with 100 times more room than you need for you and your briefcase, sucking down fuel at an enormous and wasteful rate, think about the child whose Dad is not coming home to keep your gas cheap. Then think a little bit about the irony of your stupid yellow ribbon.

Our troops should not be the tool of an immoral oligarchy.

This would be funny: Jesus: Wrong for America if it weren’t so true. By that, I mean, if Jesus was running against George Bush, this is exactly what we would get from his campaign. These guys will twist anything Kerry says to make it sound bad for America. Example, from the last debate, Bush is trying to say that thinking global is bad for America. How the fuck can international cooperation or institutions with that as their goal be bad? Yes, the UN is not perfect, but to listen to the neo-cons you’d think the UN is the enemy. Do you really think that France and Germany are our enemies? Hell no. If we don’t think global we will never have peace. Our actions effect the world and the world effects us. It is naive to think otherwise, yet that’s what Bush would have us think.

Jesus wrong for America? Hardly. Bush wrong for American? It’s a proven fact.