I had originally posted this on Daily Kos a few months back. I just realised I forgot to cross post it here, so here it is
I often wonder why people still adhere to the outdated concept of “Liberals” and “Conservatives”. These dynamics no longer exist. The country is being run by the Neo-Cons, a bunch of idealogues who kept all that sucked about conservatives, took everything redeeming, tossed it out the window, and replaced it with everything that sucked about liberals, thus forming a supersuck movement.
Now, the NeoCons are smart. They keep using the old terminology to hoodwink us all. We have to come up with a new name for ourselves, the people who are left on the outside. Why? Because there are alot of people who have far more in common with us than the DLC still consider themselves conservatives in the old teminology, and would never consider themselves liberals. To tell the truth, we don’t neccisarily qualify for that name ourselves.
To get my point, picture a circle divided into four segments. We’ll avoid good/evil/order/chaos, and just go A B C D. Now back in the day, A and B were on the same side, and C and D on the other. The NeoCons have rotated the circle, with B and C now united, but A and D have not figured that out yet.
The conservatives I’m referring to could be called Libertarians. Thats the term I use, but I’m not talking about the Ayn Rand Elitest types. I mean Libertarian as far as civil liberties go. These types were isolationists who did not go for “Liberal” wars and nation building. (Remember, Bush family aside, democrats were in charge at the beginning of every war we’d been in during the 20th century). They were for fiscal responsibility, something previously atributed with Republicans. They belived in states rights. They opposed censorship from holier than thou PC types. They hated the gradual erosion of civil liberties. They felt the drug war was unethical, and a huge waste of money. They support the second amendment, and when Waco and Ruby Ridge occured, they became worried about federal agents. And they agreed with Scalia and Thomas on one occasion, when they opposed the recent ruling upon “eminent domain”.
This sounds like a lot of the people who post here.
Those “Liberal” policies were not anything the majority of us favored, we mearly tolerated them in order to address the issues we do value, since we are stuck with a two party system. For the libertarian types I’m refering to, they did the same thing in regareds to the robber barons and the fundamentalists. Since “our” globalists and drug warriors have no problem abandoning our progressive agenda to get in bed with the fundies and the fascists, we need to give them the boot. And since we need more people to make the democratic party viable, replacing them with libertarians sounds like a major improvement, both on compadibility and numereticly. After all, some people hear do try to defend a Leiberman or a Biden, never because they support their positions, but because we need the warm bodies. Ditching Joementum would no longer be an issue if we were to gain a Ron Paul. Hell, we’d finally have someone who has the balls to call out Bush on the war.
Some of them may potentialy have reservations on some of our social issues. Realisticly however once they know which “Liberal” goals we do have and which we don’t, I’d be surprised if anyone didn’t find whatever concessions they would make to us more acceptable than ones previously made to the Fundies and Elitests. These types are also highly unlikely to be the knee jerk single/wedge issue voters. If there is disagreement over government regulation or socilization of energy/healhtcare, a potential compramize would be to mandate that sutch industries exist as non-profits. The only potential for us confict would be over guns. However, I’ve noticed that a majority of people on this web site tend to support the second amendment. Some always have, others have changed thier minds as a result of this administration. Either way, its a non-negotiable issue for people who live in rural communities, hunters and farmers in particular. Still, for those few who remain stuck on banning guns, realize that hunters, farmers, and outdoorsmen could very quickly become the winning edge on the issue of saving the environment. This should be an adequit compensation. I mean fuck guns, mother nature is far more powerful and destructive than nukes. The whole US postal service could get disgruntled at once and still not approach a hurricane in magnitude. So let’s whatch out for her instead of the postal ones.
This alliance could abolish the patriot act, save the planet, bring manufacturing back to America, end our dependance on foriegn oil, and stop the war on drugs. By legalizeing hemp, farming would become viable again, our dependance on oil would shrink dramaticly (Even if we foolishly maintain our current use of motor vehicles, hemp would still eliminate at least 25% of our various oil needs) trees would be saved, medical costs would drop, and taxation on pot would fund rehibilitation programs for other drug addictions. Oh, and we’d be able to smoke up without worring too.
These people I’m refering to have been sold out by the Republicans. As of now, they do not have reason to belive the Democrats would do anything differently. We should start to make an impression on them that we are not “that kind” of Liberal because, to tell the truth, we are not. And we don’t have to appease either, since these aren’t “that kind” of conservative.
