www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2005/06/26/the-next-big-idea
summarizes it (and I distill it further): Rick Perlstein: Democrats need to quit dicking around with triangulatio n and obsessive short-term poll watching, and instead pick a few big i deas and stick with them through thick and thin. T he actual nature of the big ideas that will revive the party is left as an exercise for the reader. Henry Farrell: Perlstein is on the right track, but theres a bigger poi nt to make: Dems dont just need to pick a few existing issues they can win with, they need to invent some brand new issues that arent even o n the radar screen right now. Dems need to invent some brand new probl ems that nobody even realizes are problems yet and then hammer away o n them. The nature of these problems is left as an exercise for the rea der. Matt Yglesias: Henry Farrell is right: we do need to invent some brand n ew markets for our political product. And none of this exercise for th e reader handwaving, either. Here are my choices: economic insecur ity and how to combine work and family and not go crazy. Thing is, Kevin doesnt particularly think Matts ideas are all that new. Nor, sadly, is he he udner the illusion that this is a breathtaking ne w idea thats going to take the country by storm. To which he poses thi s question: OK, smart guy, so what are the big issues coming down the pike? Issues of economic fairness and personal equality will ( and should) remain important underpinnings of liberalism for the forese eable future, and we need to keep fighting those fights. Thats pretty much the whole point of this blog, after all.
At the end of the 19th Century, American liberalism was but a tiny candle light in the darkness of the Gilded Age. It arose as a reaction to the i ndustrial barons of late century, who had more or less enslaved cities o f immigrants to toil in their dim brick factories. This was an age of ru dimentary equality, when women and nonwhites and the Irish werent qui te full people in the eyes of their countrymen and the law. Therefore, e ven exploratory notions about human suffragethe idea that women should be allowed to vote or that six-year-olds shouldnt be working an eightee n hour daywere greeted with violent suppression. The ideas, so ingrained in American culture that they now seem like moral positions, were truly revolutionary at the time: maybe economic and soc ial justice shouldnt be reserved only for landowning white males. Liberalism, dedicated to righting social and economic justice wrongs, had one hell of a century. Some fine-tuning, particularly in the aftermath of Reagan-Bush-Bush, may still be necessary on the economic justice front. But its hard to argue that liberalisms great challenge of the 21st Century will be economic. After womens suffrage, the civil rights movement, and feminism, there are even fewer goals remaining for social-justice advocates. So is there anything confronting liberals at the dawn of the 21st century on par wi th those at the dawn of the 20th? Two issues do: the instability of liberal democracies in the age of terro r and the consequences of global warmingthe latter of which is far more consequential than even the horrors of early factories. These create a nice twin approach for liberalism in the 21st centurydomestic and forei gn policy. Both rest on a complete reversal of neocon domination: interc onnectivity in a globalized world. We live in a world in which factories across the globe manufacture separa te components and then ship them to another factory for assembly; one in which the words of leaders and actions of nations are broadcast in real time across the globe; a world in which pollution from US tailpipes aff ect monsoons in India. Now more than ever we understand that the world i s an organismwe do not stand alone. The global environmental system is particurlarly precarious. Ive been su rprised how this issue has become a front-burner issue in recent months; thanks to panic in much of the rest of the world, the reality is sinkin g in. There is a genuine imperative here, but also an enormous opportuni ty.
Its clear that fifty years from now the world will be powered by differe nt forms of energy. The country to capitalize on those technologies will reap the earliest and largest reward. Further, the benefit of acting qu ickly averts the most catastrophic results of global warmingcritical to our health, stability, and economy in the coming century. We can either be a world leader in developing these technologies, or trail along behi nd. The last the the world went through a technological revolution (comp uting), the US took the lions share; farting around protecting Bushs b ig oil cronies is no way to capitalize on that opportunity. A liberal domestic policy would have at its core a deep and abiding inter est in moving to new non-polluting energy sources immediately. How about a liberal charge to be off t he oil-burning engine by 2018? Interconnectivity should be the guiding light in foreign policy, as well. In his Iraq misadventure, Bush inadvertently proved a critical point: t error arises not from the lack of a pure ideology, but from real factors that affect peoples lives. Under Saddam, Iraq was a terrible place, bu t it wasnt a terror-producing place. Now, in democ ratic Iraq, we have a terror-producing place. Terror-producing countries are those that are isolated, repressed, where the populations are uneducated and poor. In these countries, options for citizens are few and resentment is higha prescription for terror. Its not possible to invade all these countries, flash the vision of democra cy in front of them, and hope theyll turn into Belgium. But what we can do is engage a slow process of engagement. In our own hemisphere, weve reached out to our neighbors on trade, and for the most part, the Panam as and Nicaraguas have become more stable. When offered not only tariff- free trading, but direct access to the European economy, countries in Ea stern Europe made serious strides to become more democratic. Emerging di sconnected, poor, and repressed from the Soviet era, Warsaw-Pact countri es could easily have slid toward destabilization and terror. Instead, th ey are struggling toward the kind of democracy George Bush pays such lip service to. A liberal foreign policy that nurtured countries like the Ukraine toward democracy via a strongly carrot-based foreign policy akin to the EUs (w ith, obviously, smaller benefits) would be a strong counterpoint to the neocon faith. There are no policies or messages associated with them, but I think they form an elegant little visionnow even more than 15 months ago.
June 26th, 2005 at 8:51 pm You want real big far-reaching issues for Democrats? In a mere three billion years the sun will have swollen and made the earth too hot for humans. In just four billion years the Milky Way will begin colliding with Andromeda. Obviously we need an urgent public works program to transport all human civilization to other distant stars for safety. Im sure this program will restore a Democratic majority in no time at all.
June 26th, 2005 at 11:49 pm Whats wrong with class warfare as an issue? Terror-producing countries are those that are isolated, repressed, where the populations are uneducated and poor. In these countries, options for citizens are few and resentment is higha prescription for terror. The 9-11 hijackers had on average a better education than the average American.
June 27th, 2005 at 7:47 am The 9-11 hijackers had on average a better education than the average American. What counts is the population from which the terrorist is supported. And when a population is poor, uneducated, and repressed, the poor, uneducated, and repressed are not the whole problem: those who keep them that way are at least as dangerous. In many societies, poverty is in the same toolbox as terrorism. But it is true that the link between social conditions and terrorism is not 100%. The Symbianese Liberation Army and Bader Meinhoff, for example, operated out of prosperous and free societies.
Your reasoning works when preaching to the choir, but I am not optimistic that these issues will turn any red states blue. Global warming has been thor...
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