imanant :: look at me go.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004
here comes some punditry...

We've had almost a week to get over the (non-)shock of George Bush's election and I'm ready to put my three cents in (note: not re-election, mind you - de facto judicial appointment without the mandate of a popular vote majority is not 'winning an election' by me).

The Dems lost because the Dems don't got no soul. We are damn sure what it means to be a Republican, but we have lost any sense of what it means to be a member of the People's Party. Here are three ideas/focuses for how to get us Democrats our groove back: (yeah, i said us. The loss has made me reconsider my independence.)

1. Like Billy the Comeback Kid said, "the era of big government is over." Bush's Compassionate conservate big government has provided me more than enough reason to believe that an overly powerful centralized government won't know how or be able to contain itself. They've been frothing at the mouth since they gained control of the senate and the house.

Our federal system needs a refocusing. Widdle away redundancies left over from the cold war (FBI, CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security, and maybe a czar of intelligence??). Leave a strong structure and foundation, with minimal bueracracy focusing on efficency and clear chains of command.

Less "command and control," more working with individual groups to create the best relationship with government as opposed to just ok to bd results across the board (i.e. less lower emmision standards to 1990 levels, more "you have the money and capabilities to lower your emmisions 50%, get on it and we'll talk about a tax break")

2. Moral values? Ok, start by not bitching and paying your taxes so the government can actual help the poor, the sick and the needy by funding jumpstart welfare programs for those who need it. Don't be so damn greedy.

Simplify the tax system to say "if you don't got no money, you don't gotta pay." No more of this, no pulling their weight crap. Have ways of helping those who are in poverty with programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

The major world religions seem to agree with us:

"If you give alms openly, it is well; but if you do it secretly and give to the poor, that is better.
(Qur-an 2:271a)"

"Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your father in heaven.
(Matt. 6:1)"

"Tzedakah (צדקה) - most commonly translated as "charity", though it is based on a root meaning "justice" (צדק) According to Maimonides, there are eight levels of tzedakah in Jewish tradition, ranging from publicly giving funds, so that the donor and recipient both know who each other is, to providing the means by which a needy person can become self-sustaining."

This is not to exclude faith based and other community organizations as possibilities for helping the needy, but that should not be the default. I am a little uncomfortable with hoping religious groups will do our work for us and serve the national interest. They have their own agendas, which is fine, just not necessarily ours (federally speaking). That's all I'll say on that for now.

3. Back off of our civil rights! The Democrats should stand for full self-determination under the law, with full 14th ammendment rights. Assure the focus of the argument is on all people. Don't center it on gays or women, that's like only asking for a recount in Dade county.

For a particular example, the discussion of who should be able to marry should have nothing to do with religion. We are not led by religion, we are lead by our Constitution, so this is a 14th, 9th, and 4th ammendment issue (I am sure I could find more if I was stronger on privacy rights). If we look at the history of marrige, yes, it is traditionally a man and a woman. And originally women and blacks couldn't vote, but we changed that. Social change happens, people need to deal with it and worry about the problems in their backyard, not their neighbors.

Specifically, even Rehnquist was on the majority side in Lawrence v. Texas. The court recognizes the government can not regulate sexual relations (duh), but how far does the decision reach beyond that? We are the walls of privacy? I think they extend to who we choose to intertwine our lives with. Marriage allows for that strict intermingling of private lives, where is the constitutional justification to deny the self-determination for that? That's what marriage is, when two people decide to join their seperate lives into one. It is not illegal to be gay, or to live with someone of the same sex, or to tell anyone you want you are gay (except in the military). So it should not be illegal to choose who you want to be with and share your life with, till death do you part. Don't worry stepfather factory, I'm on your side.

I could go on with more civil rights stuff, but I'll just say this: Patriot Act.

I think 3 points is enough for now, this is becoming, well, eh, a bit ranty. Maybe I'll post more on the imanant blog. Who knew it would take a crazy republican expanding the government for a democrat to want to make the government smaller?

Here's one for victory in '08. We are gonna wreck some shit (if there is any shit to wreck left).

posted by ezruh sellof at 1:30 AM 0 comments

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