We should stop letting the Right define us

[AJH032]

For decades, the Right has labeled us liberals as pro-"big government". We've all heard it so many times that we now actually believe it ourselves, and we believe that anyone who isn't "big government" can't be a good liberal. I think we should start defining ourselves by what we truly stand for: promoting the strength of our economy here at home so that all Americans have the opportunity to succeed and not be pushed down by unrestricted corporate enterprise. If that means big government or small government, it doesn't matter. I view liberalism is the belief that government should be there for people as a safety net to fall back on. The size of our government shouldn't be our goal, it should only be a means to get to our goal. For example, Clinton actually managed to cut government by creating an economy with more employment opportunities for everyone, and as a result people weren't as dependent on government to live any more. Small government and liberalism can co-exist. Just because the pro-corporate right tells us they can't, doesn't make it so, and I think we should stop buying into their label of liberalism as necessarily being "big government".

Of course, that's just my take. I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say.

[Tigress DEM]

1. How about "Pro Working Government"

As in a Government that gets the job done - "on time and under budget" like Clinton did.

How about "Anti Liberty-Crushing-Government" as in Pro Bill of Rights?

How about "Common Sense Government" as in - if it kills (or has the potential to kill) a lot of people - REGULATE IT, otherwise see if there's a way to handle it without scrutinizing the thing to death.

[wli]

2. balderdash

The fact is some industries are most effective when nationalized, in no small part because they have concerns too long-term to be addressed by the private sector, or because their scale is too large to be properly coordinated by the private sector. Doing those things (e.g. healthcare, power utilities, etc.) is not communism or socialism or anything of the kind. It is reality and efficiency.

And their economic policy is grossly unsound. It is nominally pro-corporation but in reality is little more than a recipe for recreating 1929. Currency circulation is real, and benefits corporations. The need for nationalized healthcare is real, and benefits corporations. The need for effective education is real, and benefits corporations. Toyota didn't go to Canada because slashing education budgets and burdening corporations with health insurance costs worked. Toyota went to Canada because their idiot short-term thinking is inefficient, self-defeating, and based on one-off wage arbitrage profits with massive long-term costs from the negative consumption/profit feedback loop.

And their military policy is far beyond naive. Retired generals scoff at it regularly as the most naive and suicidal geopolitics possible. The reason you build coalitions is so that you don't bear the costs alone. The reason you don't commit war crimes is so that you don't create enemies. The reason you don't go in with guns blazing as the first resort is to save money and bullets and weapons vehicles for greater and more necessary military conflicts. Stealth, infiltration, diplomacy, and the like conserve military resources so that when violent conflict is necessary one's forces aren't decimated. The wars of aggression are piss-poor strategy. Saddam would have let us have our permanent basis for nothing more than kickbacks amounting to far less than we're paying for the Iraq war now. And the Iraqis were no friends to Iran before the war of aggression. We could have had the intact Iraqi army as a coalition partner for the invasion of Iran if it were necessary for geopolitics, which it wouldn't be if we were properly implementing geopolitical strategy.

The fact is not that we are peaceniks, or Communists. The fact is that we are the party of sound geopolitical and economic strategy. And we need to play that card hard to trump the neofascists' idiotic "talking points."