Asymmetrical Information

No democracy for Arabs!

I'd rather support a mass murderer than Bush!

Gas is for Kurds, not SUV's!

Support the French and German economy--don't disarm Saddam!

no to free speech

yes to child torture

boiling acid is good for my testicles

"Our Idiots Are Better Actors"
"Al Told Us It Would Be Like This"
"So What's A WMD Or Two Among Former Friends?"

And, of course, the most useful sign in a modern leftist protest:

(This Space For Rent)

"Peace in our time"?

What do we mean by Left?

And no, it's not simply a semantic game.

If by Left you mean the hardcore stalinists or statists of old then nothing can revive them.

But if by Left you mean mainstream liberal thought, the kind that opposed what Barry Eichengreen calls "19th Century Capitalism", then they have (almost completely) won the war of ideas and policies.

I suppose it depends on your point of view. From where I sit, it looks like they're being shelled out of some heavily defended positions one by one.

That's why I'm asking which Left you have in mind.

It seems that depending on which it is the answer is different.

Where is Janeane Garofalo when you need her?

Seen on a blog recently, in a photoshopped picture:

"What Would Chamberlain do?"

A sign I would wave at them in a counter-protest:

"Brains not Bongs"

Actually it looks like two great big f***ing snow storms in 48 hours is going to save New York. Sorry about the language, but just look at how they're lining up.

"The message on this sign is a flat lie."

It's true that parts of the left are marginal based on some of their ideas. But peace is, in most circumstances, a good idea. It's cheap, for one thing. It's moral. It's also consistent with liberty, and consistent with capitalism. The left probably would agree with all of those except the last.

Aggression is a bad idea. War is expensive; aggressive war immoral; and war practically always leads to loss of liberty. That the center-right and right are pushing it reflects badly on them.

For new peace slogans, I nominate Peace Now! Socialism Never! I'd also like to put in a good word for the always relevant "Don't Tread on Me".

Leonard: "war practically always leads to loss of liberty"

Just because you say it, that don't make it so.

yeah that damn revolution in 76... and the 5 years that led to the tyrannization of western europe...

That's why I'm asking which Left you have in mind.

Aw, GT - don't start this again. It's the "modern left." I explained it to you before, too! :-) If you're not pulling our collective leg, I'll offer you a plan to find out what we're always referring to.

Pick up a phone and call every major political magazine, any newspaper that will admit to a general ideological bent, every columnist. Ask them if they consider themselves conservative (right!) or liberal (left!) and then follow up with a short poll as to where they stand on issues facing today's industrialized population. Most of the left will stand in opposition to the offensive against Iraq; will not be bothered by the foundation behind today's peace movement, particularly the major rallies; will prefer United Nations jurisdiction, no matter how Orwellian, to the action of democratic nations. For a kicker, ask them what they think about Bush's intelligence. Most of them will guffaw and proceed to unload many pottymouthed, multi-syllabic phrases.

Those are just sampler questions on this thread's general topic - the war on terror.

Next: to find the left at large, ask every single one of these sources who their audience consists of. Between who it is that makes public statements and espouses policy, be it from the political or intelligentsia echelons, and who listens to them - you will have the left.

It make take time for you to compile a cohesive demographic, but you should be able to put together a good idea from this material.

Slogans, slogans. How about Europe? As a caveat, I'm poking fun with a smirk and a glint in me eye.

For Chancellor Schroeder and his government:
SIEG OIL

WILL COMPETE IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS FOR FOOD

DEUTSCHMARKS UBER ALLES

For Monsieur Chirac and his:
THE FRENCH ARE NO COWARDS,
IT'S YOUR IMAGINOTATION

NOT IN OUR BUSINESS DEAL

VIVE LE ƒ

For Belgium:
WE LOVE FINGERCUFFS

Un autre pour France:

REMEMBER OSIRAK

I'm surprised they missed the classic anti-war slogans "Free Mumia" and "Zionism = racism". And where are all the Hitler comparisons? They're really letting Bush off way too easy.

At least they have their environmentalist bases covered - let's not lose focus on what this is really about. If we only had more windmills this would all just go away.

And my personal favorite?

"Don't Blame Me. I voted for Mondale."

:)

How about a paraphrase of the sardonic -

Anthony Westell, on December 4, 1942: "Japanese threat? What Japanese threat? They haven't attacked America in almost a year!"

Oops... find Garofalo at http://www.konscious.com/transfer/winwithoutwar/garofalo_talbert.mov

This is a bit of an in-joke for residents of Canada, where paranoia about water exports to the United States is a tic of the Canadian left. From an actual sign, yes really, at a Canadian "anti-war" demonstration:

NO BLOOD FOR OIL
Is Canada's Water Next?

"Don't kill Iraqi civilians! That's Saddam's job!"

"Bush Is A Servant Of Sauron. We Hates Him!"

I am sorry, I don't recall painting that in signs in 1991. And I'm a geek!

Apparently this or something like it was actually a sign held up in a DC protest:

"Don't do it George, your daddy will still love you!!!"

How about:

NO MORE BLOOD FOR JEWS!

I mean, why not get to the point.

No, you didn't explain it before.

And you haven't now either.

The 'modern' left means nothing.

Always try to be precise, otherwise debates are useless.

If Jane would explain who she has in mind when she talks of the Left (The Democrats? The Naderites? College students? Chomsky?) one could more easily engage in a debate.

But without any kind of specificity it becomes yet another empty strawman argument.

For me the only meaningful use of the "Left" has to be the Democratic Party. If you limit it to the Naderites you are talking about only 2% of the political spectrum and, while not totally insignificant, it would leave us with a definition of the Center and the Right that is 98% of the voting population.

If one looks at what the Democrats/modern liberals have fought for on both social and fiscal issues their triumph in the last 50 years over the Right (meaning conservatives and republicans) has been almost complete. Not totally but getting there.

From abortion to gay rights, from the modern role of government (including its size) to the importance of the environment and the need to put limits on corporations, it's hard to come up with any major issue where the country is not today to the left of where it was in 1950. Deregulation may be the sole exception and even that was started by a Democrat.

And if you go further back, say to the beginning of the 1900s the triumpgh is even clearer. People forget that things like women voting and workplace protection used to be 'liberal' issues. No longer. The triumph is so complete nobody debates that anymore.

Conservatives have been forced to move to the left and declare victory. They no longer oppose Social Security, as they used to, because it is government mandating citizens to save for their old age. No, the basic idea of what SS stands for is now accepted by all. The debate has moved from the need of forcing people to save to the best way to accomplish that. Conservatives now accept that government can and should force people to save but they think (and personally I agree) that there are better ways of doing that than the current SS.

GT, the Progressive presumption of the Left is that change on balance is good. The Conservative presumption of the Right is that change destroys the good with the bad, and that in the US which has much to be grateful for, such change destroys more good than bad. In the current context of incremental reform which the Clinton era of balanced budgets and triangulation ushered in, the Left's inclination for sweeping reform has been stymied, as was shown in the demise of Health Care Reform in 1993-4. Instead the gradual implementation of small changes to the current system has provided a systemically Conservative environment which spelled the demise of the ideological aspirations of such dinosaurs as David Bonior and the late Paul Wellstone. It is not that Conservatives eschew reform, but they don't do it for change's sake alone. That is why Jane appears exultant at times. Every time Bush finds a compassionately Conservative way to incrementally steal the Democrat's issues, that is one more segment of the US electorate which won't vote against the Republican Party based on some narrow issue constituency concern.

GT - what is "the left?" That's easy to answer -- it's anything that is not right. ;)

jane, i don't get what you are saying with that list of sayings on your original post. are those sayings that you decry as stale and unoriginal? some of them are pretty funny ("we hates him").

also, how were you able to paint "draft the bush twins" on a sign opposing the first gulf war? i know, i know, you said "nearly" every one, but i was spotting you the lord of the rings parody, and the "dick" thing (no references to nixon, now, you said the gulf war).

here's one that even a libertarian can love:

make money, not bombs.

hopefully the economy will turn around before we die.

I didn't paint all of 'em, as I said, but all the good ones. I guess we hates him is funny, but casting yourself as Gollum is not generally a good way to win supporters for your cause. Draft the Bush twins is all right, but neither clever nor terribly convincing. The unelected tyrant thing would be funny, if the rest of the country didn't know that Bush won the damn recount, something that liberals seem to have developed a strange sort of collective amnesia on, which makes them look not quite bright -- not the image you want to project at an important demonstration. And to any anti-war folks who may be reading this: there's something not quite convincing about showing up at a peace rally with a sign celebrating someone's death.

Will shirk for food.

Thanks to Instapundit today, I'm still rolling on the floor over "FRODO HAS FAILED / BUSH HAS THE RING"

No, you didn't explain it before. And you haven't now either. The 'modern' left means nothing. Always try to be precise, otherwise debates are useless.

The problem with your "please hand me the names and addresses of every member of the so-called 'left'" request is that I/we define the right identically. Either you accept that an ideological similarity throughout popular media warrants classification, begets congregation and therefore requires accountability; or you don't.

As for Republicans becoming "liberal," I won't have any of that. The difference I have drawn between "liberal" and "conservative" is a discrepancy in the desire to adhere to intangible principles - not at all a fear or penchant for "change."

Liberals reason through relativism; conservatives absolutism. For example, former claims less of those religious; the latter claims less who believe in holistic egalitarianism.

Now, what you're doing by claiming that the Democrats have been "winning" this past century is assuming that to be "liberal" is to be "progressive" whereas to be "conservative" is to be "reactionary." You've also rhetorically included the Democrats as paragons of change.

Not necessarily so.

Take civil rights, for example. From The WSJ:

T]he actual voting record for both Houses of Congress shows that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed the Senate on a 73-to-27 vote. The Democratic supermajority in the Senate split their vote 46 (69%) for and 21 (31%) against. The Republicans, on the other hand, split their vote 27 for (82%) and 6 against (18%). Thus, the no vote consisted of 78% Democrats. Further, the infamous 74-day filibuster was led by the Southern Democrats, who overwhelmingly voted against the act.

An examination of the House vote shows a similar pattern. The House voted 290 to 130 in favor. Democrats split their vote 152 (61%) to 96 (39%) while Republicans split theirs 138 (80%) to 34 (20%). The no vote consisted of 74% Democrats. Clearly, the 1964 Civil Rights Act could not have been passed without the leadership of Republicans such as Everett Dirksen and the votes of Republicans.

So quite a significant factor in our life today is in no way from the crusades of Democrats. Today, of course, the Democrats are beginning to reinstitutionalize racism by filibustering the nomination of a Honduran man (with laughably flimsy justification) who happens not to be their conception of a good Hispanic (i.e., liberal). Another example would be the slow hit against Al Sharpton; obviously a product of liberal ideals, he's nevertheless - curiously - an embarrassment to the Democratic establishment. He's just got to go. Further, many arguments have been made against the sedentary ideals of affirmative action; the case with Michigan demonstrates a cultural ambition to engage in colorblind merit. Democrats are opposed. At what point can a man with different color skin not be told he's at an unrectifyable disadvantage? Apparently never, in the eyes of a liberal Democrat. The Democrats - the liberals, the relativists - are reactionary.

Abortion-on-demand is another liberal cause but the provision of this as a societal improvement is rickety, as it's quite debatable as to whether it's either freedom or greed. Next!

Republicans show themselves to be progressive on a number of issues, including social security. They're certainly aware of politics and would never, today, bring up the idea that Roosevelt intended (and entitled) the service as a supplement. But conservatives and conservative Republicans are beginning the push - the progressive push - to appeal to today's you, growing, working and investor classes who care less for a goverment monetary nanny. Democrats stay wary of the "third rail," and haven't proposed anything outside of simply adding more money or benefits for decades. Conservative Republican leaders have taken hold of the issue and will proceed to modify it for a new generation.

How about foreign policy? The liberals are either firmly entrenched in appeasement - inspectors, more time and treaties. Liberals are either pining for 1968 or 1938. Their relativist notions shine through as they equate America's moral authority with that of the United Nations; or Israel's right to exist with...Arafat's. They wax Luddite by refusing to believe that the military must eventually expand into space. Conservatives and conservative Republicans are recognizing a post-Cold War potential for a new world order. Global democracy is a bit of a pill to swallow today, but by challenging the work of dictators and terrorists, as well as the logical apostasy that the autocrat-infected United Nations has become, Republicans are again working to enact change.

So, GT, a new definition for you to disregard out of hand: liberals are not necessarily progressive, but are by definition relativist. Conservatives are not necessarily progressive, but are by definition absolutist.

This free trading dove's motto from the start has been:

Drop Gaps, Not Bombs!

Radley -- I think by the time you'd dropped a Gap from 30,000 feet, I think you'd find it released as much energy as your average sized bomb. ;-)

Is "Make love, not war"

equivalent to a simple:

"Drop trou!"?

Michael U.: Actually that is a good reason (absolutist vs relativist) to say that there is a 2D political paradigm in the US.

relativist vs absolutist (uses external moral code)
progressive vs conservative

I've seen all combinations, with most of the left being Democrats, but far from all, and most of the right being Republicans, but with major exceptions.

Major political shifts happen when a party gets 3 out of 4 parts of the polity voting for it. Reagan did than wrt the Soviet threat, but didn't hold the consensus into the second term. FDR did it in the New Deal. Lincoln did it with the Emancipation Proclamation, along with taking Atlanta. Got this from a discussion in Slate's Fray 2 years ago, so the idea's not mine.

that is a good reason (absolutist vs relativist) to say that there is a 2D political paradigm in the US.

I'd agree, though I wouldn't see it as dependent upon the relativst/absolutist ideal. The electoral system prevents any major ballot upsets from third parties (which I don't mind at all). But even at the local level, all sorts of policy and ideological splits present themselves within the dominant American parties - divergences that, if in a parliamentary system of government, would result in the multiplicity of parties and factions that routinely form coalition governments.

On the other hand, if we consider factors beyond physical affiliation and could go straight to moral and ethical reasoning, we would find the relativist/absolutist line that divided politicians. With today's numbers, quite evenly.

And this, of course, extends into media/chattering classes.

Interesting concept from the Fray.

jane, how about "wrap this administration in duct tape and plastic"?

as to casting oneself as gollum, when creating humor, it's advised not to take oneself too terrible seriously, darling.

whoops, sorry, forgot one:

what would jesus bomb?

arrghh! i meant to say "too terribly seriously" not too "terrible" seriously.

drop grammer not bombs.

Yes, but. . . a fair number of people already think of the antiwar coalition as Gollum -- more interested in getting the ring for themselves than destroying it. (Think the many variations on "I'd support the war if a Democrat was running it"). I don't think a good sign reinforces that impression.

Two-four-six-eight, we don't want to det-on-ate.

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