I was just listening to MPR (Minnesota Public Radio for the uninitiated) and they were discussing the current divide between the two political parties in Washington. The speaker (I have no idea who he was since I turned the show on halfway through) made the statement that a big part of the problem is that the Republicans have gotten so conservative, and the Democrats have gotten so liberal.
WHAT??!!
I am a liberal. I am very, very, unabashedly liberal. Most of the Democrats in Congress however, are not.
Just look at the President. Do people really and truly believe that he is oh-so-very liberal? Yes, he may lean to the left, but he's nowhere near a full-fledged liberal when it comes to most issues. He is fully willing to compromise any liberal beliefs that he has to get his job done and stay popular with the independents.
Just because the Republicans have become more conservative, doesn't mean that the Democrats by default have become more liberal. We seem to live in this state of equal time; where if there is one side, there must be an equal point of view on the other side. If 'A' equals 'A', then 'B' MUST equal 'B.' If conservatives love America, then liberals must hate it. If Republicans like "family values" then Democrats must hate them.
I just really don't see how anyone can take an honest look at the Democratic Party and say that they are "more liberal" than they ever used to be. There are a few tried and true liberals like Barney Frank, Al Franken, and Bernie Sanders, but on the whole, the Democratic Party has been inching to the right for quite some time now. Our whole system has strayed to the right, and maybe that makes it look like the Dems are more liberal than they actually are. Sadly, they are not.
I think I would have more respect for both "sides" if they could be more willing to actually discuss and consider ideas put forth by the "other side". Instead of automatically deeming it wrong or "evil" just because the proposer of the idea holds different political views. It aggravates me to no end when either talks (or posts in forums) as if the word used to describe the "other side" were some kind of "dirty word."
ReplyDeleteI'm a liberal and that's not a dirty word; my friend is a conservative and that's not a dirty word either. True, there isn't much politically that we agree on, but neither of our lives revolve around that fact. Example: I spend a lot of time on Facebook and another forum arguing for gay rights and marriage equality; my friend believes in neither of those things. Yet, when she discovered that one of her gaming friends is a young man who is just coming to terms with his homosexuality, she recommended me to him as a Facebook friend because she knows I'll try to help him and I belong to several gay rights pages and groups I can link him to for help. The one rule we both adhere to is that neither of us comments on the other's posts on political issues.
My siblings and I do the same - we limit our postings to each other to family matters and news about ourselves.
I don't know tons about political history; just enough to get by. But when you hear "older" legislators talk about how it used to be, it seems like there was a time when the two sides could at least talk to each other in a civil manner.
ReplyDeleteWhat I truly don't understand is the assumption that the left is getting more liberal. Perhaps the base is more liberal (although I'm not entirely sure about that either), but the politicians sure aren't. Where I live, we can't even get our Democrats to follow the pro-choice stance set out in the party platform. And Obama has been lukewarm at best on GLBT issues.