Red/Blue global family

ARTICLE: Red Family, Blue Family, By Doug Muder, February, 2005

Interesting read that slowly pulls you in. My reader's point, which I endorse: a fascinating glimpse of the Core-Gap ideological mindsets (just transpose Ault's argument globally). To choose connectivity is to choose family. To focus on given family is typically to say the change of connectivity just isn't worth the cost (travel, less attachment to land and tradition, urbanization, women's rights, secularism, etc.).

It reminds me of the old social workers' saw: Every kid grows up thinking that the world is exactly like their family.

Thanks to Bruce Hughes for sending this.

Comments

[Michael]

Unless we start adopting:) Or maybe take advantage of our lack of queeziness over biotechnology to clone hordes of Democrats*evil grin*

Seriously, I doubt that genetics effects what beliefs are held so much as one's approach to one's beliefs.

[Jeremy A]

When I read this guy talking about "Plutocrats" and "wage stagnation" and "growing rich-poor gap" and lamenting outsourced jobs, I really, really don't come away with the impression that he's advocating connectivity in any meaningful way. Rather, the same old talk of modern, liberal values (all fine and good), but demonizing the main factor that allows them to take root and spread (those big, mean evil rich guys buying rolexes and ruthlessly seeking out economic advantage at the expense of the old community and whatnot).

For all their failures of vision and imagination on dealing with the new realities that globalization creates, the Republicans tend to get it right w/ regards to the international economics and markets that drive globalization in the first place. Dems tend to have the right ideas about the need for greater international political cooperation, but what good is that if it comes along with economic populist drivel that's hinted at in this piece, and becoming more and more a mantra in Congress?

[TEJ]

"Because we don’t admit that people have reasons to be afraid of us, we end up scaring them unnecessarily. We communicate badly with the Islamist Right, and just as our incomprehension of them leads to paranoia, so does their incomprehension of us.

"Islamist propagandists take advantage of that misunderstanding by projecting a shadow frame onto us. Their demonic American is a person with no moral depth or seriousness. Convenience is his only true value. Words that we revere, such as freedom and choice, rebound against us: We like these words because we want to be free of our obligations and choose the easy way out.

"Just as married people sometimes imagine the single life as far more licentious and libidinous than it ever actually is, so people born into life-defining obligations imagine a life free from such obligations. The truth about Americans– that we more often than not choose to commit ourselves to marriage, children, church, and most of the other things Muslims feel obligated to, and that we stick by those commitments every bit as faithfully, if not more so – easily gets lost.

I replaced 'Christian' and 'Republican' with 'Islamist' and 'Muslim', replaced 'Liberal' with 'American'. Article still makes a lot of sense, yes?

[stuart abrams]

This discussion reminds me a bit of Thomas Franks' book "What's The Matter With Kansas." He says that Republicans have won because they successfully co-opted class-based politics by painting liberals as rich Volvo-driving latte drinkers who want to undermine traditional families. Franks says the solution for Democrats is to get back to populism and appeal to these voters in terms of class interests. I think he is somewhat correct on the analysis in terms of the connections between economics and world-view (Barnett's point) but Franks is dead wrong on the solution. I say Democrats need to reach out to the remaining rich Volvo-driving latte drinkers who continue to vote Republican because they believe (often correctly) that Democrats only want to raise taxes and penalize business. I'm looking for a Democrat who is smart and "progressive" (in a true sense) enough to have a "Dr. Strangelove moment" and announce, "How We Learned To Stop Worrying [About Class] and Love Global Capitalism."

[Anonymous]

Democrats have lost touch with middle America (sociologically and geographically). and those fly-over people cast a lot of votes. if Democrats ever want to win, they have to connect with people who at least respect traditional values. like him or hate him, Bill Clinton did so.

if the Dems could do that and successfully paint themselves as the party of the regular guy and not the Suburban-driving, rich white Repubs, they could really be a factor.

(before you pounce: i'm not saying the Repubs are that stereotype. we're talking realpolitik here.)

of course, the Dems need to let go of some of the deadweight that is not helping their populism: isolationism, old labor alliances, parts of the African American vote that are not helping them.

health care (something reasonable) and education (reaction to the No Child Left Behind unintended consequences) are ripe for the picking.

just as Buckley helped forge a center-right movement by cutting loose the far right wackos, the Dems need to forge a center-left movement by cutting loose the far left wackos. the 'far left wackos' could even be right. but they'll continue to be unelectable.

[stuart abrams]

Sean -I am starting to hate the labels of "Left" and "Right". I find them "very 20th Century" -- at best. I like Barnett's Core/Gap division, even as to domestic politics. Do you want the kind of society that globalization promises -- open, tolerant, multi-cultural, uncertain and experimental -- or do you want the kind that comes when you move back from that -- closed, rigid, segregated, certain. In some ways, people on the "Left" go into the latter category and people on the "Right" go into the former category. That's why I find these labels very unhelpful.

[Anonymous]

thanks, Dan.

stuart: i agree. i'm almost apolitical myself. i'm disgusted by all.

i wrote above about the realities as i see them. that's the game the Dems are in, and if they want to play, they'd be smart to learn the rules.

your comment evokes Tom's 'our int'l friends will be more like us economically than politically' observation. hmm...

not to be argumentative, but i don't think of the Right as the former and the Left as the latter. not sure i can do better.

connectivity: the right values economics and making money. they value security. the left values intellect/academics and human rights. the right likes their traditional values but not those of other cultures (broadly speaking). the left likes the traditional values of other cultures (except where they violate modernism/postmodernism), but not ours. people flows.

it's friday. brain spinning down...

[stuart abrams]

Not to beat a dead horse, but hey, isn't the internet supposed to encourage dialogue?I didn't mean to suggest that the Core/Gap distinctions correlated to Left and Right, one way or the other. My point was, they don't. In some ways, the so-called "Left" lines up with anti-gloablization positions, but in some ways the opposite is true. That's why I think we should throw the Left/Right classification system into the dustbin of history.I'm not at all apolitical - just the opposite. I'd just like to work on pushing our politicians to make sense in today's world, instead of getting trapped in historical ideological strait-jackets like worrying about whether you are "Left", "Right" or "Center."Candidly, if you put a gun to my head and told me I had to classify myself, I'd say I'm a Leftist. But when I read Daily Kos, I often have a hard time finding that I have much in common with anything I read there. As Marx once said, "I am no longer a Marxist."